


A Quiet Heart

by gallifreyburning



Series: A Quiet 'Verse [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, Multi, contains a dash of Leela/Romana that can be interpreted however you like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-06-29 21:37:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 70,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyburning/pseuds/gallifreyburning
Summary: Leela and Narvin's moments between canon, from the Axis until the Time War. This is how a human warrior and her Time Lord came to fall in love. Romana makes occasional appearances, but this is primarily an expansion of the backstory between the Lady President's companions.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The last chapter of this fic is a Cliff's Notes for the Gallifrey series, as it pertains to this story, in case you are like me, and can't always remember the detailed ins-and-outs of this labyrinthine canon. I'll add to this summary each time the story updates. And if you haven't ever listened to Gallifrey (in which case ... wow, is someone forcing you to read this story under duress? Blink twice if you need help), the last chapter includes enough basic info to orient you. 
> 
> Also, if you're into this granular sort of thing, the fic title is [from here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVwSP51KVO8)

**Set just after "Gallifrey 4.2: Disassembled"**

 

“Hush, Narvin,” Leela hisses. She cocks her head, blind eyes staring into nothing as she listens for something he can’t hear yet.

For an inferior species, she does have remarkable senses, so he indulges her.

This version of the Citadel baffles him, built without a protective dome and teeming with alien plant life Narvin can’t identify, even though he passed his botany classes at the Academy with the highest grade for his year. Purple vines cover the walls around them, bioluminescent leaves swaying rhythmically in the early dusk. They haven’t seen anyone else in the last six hours of exploration, just neatly laid-out streets crumbling into rubble.

He lets his respiratory bypass kick in, so his breathing won’t interfere with Leela’s listening, and waits in complete stillness. His obedience isn’t driven by fear, really, it isn’t. More like sensible caution.

Perhaps it was a mistake for them to have left the Axis without Romana, to reconnoiter alternate Gallifreys on their own. Sure, Romana has been moping in her room for longer than is prudent (“Not moping, Narvin. _Mourning_. Braxiatel meant something to her that you do not fully understand,” Leela chided when he commented on it; she wasn’t wrong, but honestly, they can’t afford to indulge that sort of emotionalism in their present circumstances). Narvin isn’t even sure what Romana could possibly contribute to this particular expedition, but being the only apparent Gallifreyan left on Gallifrey feels eerie, even to his unsentimental hearts. Maybe she would’ve had the good sense to order a retreat before now.

Narvin listens, and peers into this foreign Gallifreyan dusk, and finds nothing.

Leela’s hand darts to her belt, fingers closing around the hilt of her large knife.

For the umpteenth time, he curses himself for not snatching a staser from the last Gallifrey they visited. “What is it?” he whispers, impatience getting the better of him. Definitely impatience, absolutely not fear.

“Shh.” The sound is hardly louder than her breath, and she gropes placatingly toward him with her free hand. “At least four of them, somewhere up ahead.”

Four of _what_?

“I’ll take a look,” he says, shrugging off her touch and moving toward the nearest corner. Taking part in field operations were a necessary annoyance during Narvin’s career in the CIA, until he became Coordinator and was able to delegate those assignments as he saw fit. At some point he might stop longing for his native timeline with its domesticated, vine-free Capitol, a tangle of labyrinthine corridors and even more labyrinthine politics, but not today. He’d rather sit through a dozen interrogations with Inquisitor Darkel than do this sort of grunt work, more suited to a chancellery guard than the Coordinator of the CIA.

Especially a CIA Coordinator fresh out of regenerations.

Leela’s silent steps make him feel like a galumphing pig-bear. Around the corner is nothing in particular, only another dusky street, full of crumbling buildings and empty black windows. He waits and watches for an eternal microspan.

“Leela, there’s nothing here,” he says in a regular voice, still shielded behind the wall.

The attack is so sudden, Narvin doesn’t even know whether the thing that hit him was a biped or not. He’s on his back, hearts hammering on both sides of his chest, black spots dancing in his vision. Nearby, Leela emits a hair-raising battle cry. Hot liquid hits him – green blood, not human or Gallifreyan.

Lurching to his feet, he blinks hard, assuming a fighting stance. His head swims. Nearby, in the midst of three purple creatures pulsing with the same bioluminescent glow as the vines, Leela moves like a dancer, slicing and dodging with ethereal grace. A fourth animal is already down, whimpering as it bleeds out on the cobbled street.

Narvin quickly surveys their surroundings – remembering to look up this time, because he’s certain the ambush came from a black window somewhere above them – to make sure there aren’t any more hostiles. He kicks over the downed one, scavenging for a useable weapon, and finds only claws and teeth. By the time he whirls toward Leela, steeling his nerves to fling himself into the melee unarmed, he’s too late.

Leela’s form is hunched on the ground, heaving in exertion, her flaming red hair half-plastered to her head with blood. In this strange light, Narvin can’t tell whose blood it is. The things around her are sliced open and leaking organs, fluid, all of it pooling around her body.

He calls her name, tripping over his robes as he dashes to her side. She’s been hurt, he’s certain, maybe fatally. She won’t regenerate any more than he will.

She makes a sound, and as he reaches to pull her from the carnage, he realizes she’s laughing. Quicker than his grasping hands can offer assistance, she’s on her feet. She hadn’t collapsed and wasn’t injured, merely crouching in the stance she used to deal the final blow to her last enemy. Leela isn't particularly tall for a human woman, but in this moment she towers over him. She’s smiling, soaked in the blood of her enemies, teeth bared in greeting to the death she has brought to this world.

Staring into nothing, ecstasy painted across her features, she is like an ancient Gallifreyan goddess from the Old Times, bent on justice and destruction; she looks as if she could call down the stars and put an end to this version of his home altogether, if she chose.

Narvin’s respiratory bypass has kicked in again, and he only realizes it when he tries to talk and can’t find oxygen.

“Are you – are you alright?” he manages.

She turns her head toward him, guided by his noise. “They are all dead.”

It isn’t a question, but he answers anyway. “Yes.”

“Are there more?”

“No.”

“Pity.” She tilts her head, as if she can hear his scalp throbbing. “You are injured?”

He lifts a hand to the crown of his head, probing at the tender spot where he was struck. Not a concussion, he decides. “No.”

“You say you are not injured, and yet you still sound strange. You were afraid?”

 _Of course not. I was surprised_ , he wants to say, his single life grinding at the base of his skull like a broken vertebrae. He says nothing.

“Or perhaps you were just slow, Narvin,” she says, with only the tiniest hint of condescension.

Tearing his gaze from his blood-soaked companion, he stares into the darkness falling overhead, familiar constellations emerging in the night sky. On Chancellor Dondequest’s Gallifrey, Narvin's entire future had been ripped away; on the last Gallifrey, his other self had been dead for years, unmourned and unmissed. On this current Gallifrey, he is easy prey for any wild thing roaming the streets of the Capitol, as helpless as a time tot compared to the blind savage standing next to him.

He lifts his communicator. “K-9, we’re coming back to the Axis. Send me the current coordinates for the portal.”

 

~~~~~~

 

Romana explained the Axis to Leela by likening it to a tree, its branches stretching into the broken and truncated realities rejected by the Time Lords, in favor of the dominant reality the four of them originated in. When they first arrived, her Time Lord companions whispered among themselves about an Overseer, but Leela has spent many hours exploring this seemingly infinite place and never found anyone else.  Without her sight, only her other senses to inform her opinions, Leela has decided that the moment-to-moment reality of this place is most similar to being inside a very sterile, personality-free TARDIS. Rooms come and go, responding to the needs of its occupants. Hallways adjust, depending on the stride length of those who walk its floors. Romana’s sparse quarters were several doors away from Leela’s when they first moved in, but after Leela’s first sleep (it wasn’t a night, with no suns or moons in this place), her room had moved adjacent to her friend’s.

After Braxiatel and the Lord Burner Doctor fell into the Time Vortex, apparently forever, Braxiatel’s quarters vanished within a matter of minutes. His overstuffed armchairs, his oversized desk, his towering wall of books, all of them gone as if they never existed, just like Braxiatel himself.

Braxiatel’s door vanished, and Narvin’s moved from its isolated position at the end of the corridor to the space right beside Leela’s. No one has commented on the change. What is there to say, when there are only three of them left, plus K-9?

After Leela rinses the warm, fizzling blood of those plant creatures from her skin and hair, she locates Narvin by the scent of a brewed beverage filling the air, like a map pointing directly to the galley. Tapping the wall to warn of her approach, so as not to overtax his already strained nerves, she feels her way to the table and plops down into a chair.

He immediately stands up. She frowns at the air in front of her, not sure what she’s done to offend, to drive him out of the room. “Narvin?”

Seconds later, something hot comes to rest against her knuckles. He fetched her a cup of his tea.

“Thank you,” she says, grinning as her fingers curl around the cup. He has never offered her food or drink from his hands before; the gesture of comradeship delights her. He resumes his place on the opposite side of the table.

“Mmm,” he replies, nose buried in his own drink, by the sound of it. She can’t smell the alien blood on him anymore. Is there another lavatory in this place? She’s only ever found the one, feeling her way along cold, smooth walls and doorways.

“We ought to leave again, to explore another Gallifrey. We’ll eat to replenish our strength, and then go,” she says.

He chuckles so softly, she almost misses it under the weird hum of the Axis, with its hidden machines and temporal whatsits. “You really are like a wild creature, with your need for air and exercise.”

“You really are like one of the statues in Pandak Square, content to stand still and do nothing,” she retorts, still grinning. She wishes she could hear the smug expression fall from his face. She likes it when he’s irritated, eyebrows drawn together and mouth pulled into a grimace. A sour look suits him.

His sigh, however, isn’t irritated. It’s resigned. “Until Romana is done mopin –”

“Mourning, and planning,” Leela interrupts sharply.

Another sigh. “It isn’t wise to take such risks, just the two of us. What would happen to Romana if we had both died on that street today, without telling her we’d even left the Axis?”

“But we did not die.”

“What if we had? You’d leave your Lady President with only K-9 to help her find her way home? You’re her bodyguard.”

“I am her friend.”

“Aren’t you lucky.” Now he _is_ irritated. Does he think that Romana sees no value in his company, past his possible utility? “You would leave your friend, then?”

Leela considers the question. “When the elders of our tribe were injured, we did not cast them out. We cared for them. We saw to their needs until they had recovered. Romana needs a way to defeat this Dogma Virus, and a solution might be found on one of these other Gallifreys. While she is injured over the loss of Braxiatel and considering our future path, I will see to her needs.” She pauses, listening to Narvin shift uncomfortably in his chair. Without judgment, in earnest curiosity, she asks, “You were very frightened today?”

“I was unprepared. It isn’t a sensation I enjoy.”

Leela reaches under the Time Lord clothes she’s wearing – scrounged from the shelves in the lavatory, while her leather skins hang dry from their washing – and places her knife on the table between them. “I will teach you, if you’d like.”

Narvin snorts, the legs of his chair scraping the floor as he gets to his feet. His drink splashes into a drain, poured from his cup. “You think I need instruction in hand-to-hand combat?”

“Yes.”

“I passed all of the required combat training courses at the CIA,” he says stiffly. “What I need is a staser.”

“We have none. How long ago were those courses, Narvin? You are a weapon – a weapon of cunning, of plans and manipulation. I am a weapon of a different sort. But we can learn from each other, while we walk this path together, in this strange place.”

The room is so still, she almost wonders if he managed to transmat to a different part of the Axis. Eventually his footsteps echo down the stark walls of the corridor as he leaves.

 

~~~~~~

 

Time does not exist inside the Axis, and Narvin has never before had trouble ignoring its passage or lack thereof. He’s Time Lord; it’s the most basic part of his biology and schooling. He was the Coordinator of the CIA; his life and livelihood depended on his ability to adjust his experiences according to everything other than pedestrian chronometry. But ever since his stint in the Gallifrey Incorporated timeline, ever since Surgeon Master Rexus extracted all of his future regenerations, he feels the turn of each microspan like a millwheel grinding his life to dust. He cannot ignore it, or stop it, or change it in any way. Time perpetually passes inside this dying body, faster and faster, regardless of when and where he is. It is at once novel and terrifying: time itself, and his own personal lack thereof.

Mortality. The workaday, omnipresent kind suffered by all lesser species.

What a bitch.

His body reaches for temporal landmarks in spectacularly irritating new ways. Marking the microspans between his trips to relieve himself in the lavatory, between his sparse bouts of sleep, between every pang of hunger. Each physical sensation, so easily ignored before his existence was burned down to one single life, is now all-consuming.

Leela has given him space since their conversation in the galley, spending her time sprinting through the halls when she’s restless, playing games with K-9, taking food to Romana.

Romana, who is still moping about Braxiatel in her quarters.

Narvin, on the other hand, is _not_ moping. He is sitting quite purposefully on the edge of his bunk, still in his long shorts, waiting patiently for the energy to pull on his CIA robes. He is resting elbows on knees, chin in hands, staring at motes of dust that do not exist on the Axis, because he cannot think of anything better to look at. The cold metal floor stings his bare toes, and he considers trimming his toenails, but it seems an excessive amount of work.

He isn’t exactly sure what he _is_ doing, but regardless, it’s the polar opposite of moping.

When a knock sounds at his door, it finally provides the motivation to put on his clothes. He calls “Enter!” with as much authority as he can muster, casting about for a data pad so he can look busy.

The door opens, and Leela stands on the threshold, a tray of steaming food in her hands.

His burst of energy deflates. He didn’t even have to put on anything. It doesn’t matter in the slightest if he’s only in his underthings. He could do a naked polka up and down the corridor, and Leela would never know.

“I thought you might be hungry,” she says, stepping forward tentatively, exploring the floor with the tips of her boots; inviting herself into his room while mapping terrain.

It isn’t as if there are any obstacles to worry about. For some cruel reason, his quarters are an exact replica of his first-year dorm cubicle at the Academy, complete with bare metal walls and paper-thin mattress on a narrow bunk. Narvin hasn’t decided whether it was Braxiatel’s doing, or something the Axis seized out of his own mind. Regardless, there’s hardly room to turn around, much less trip over anything.

Except Narvin himself, of course. He reaches out, plucking away the tray before she spills it.

“Thank you.” Dismissive, automatic. He hasn’t felt hungry in a while. He doesn’t want this food.

“I have slept twice since you last came out of this room,” she says, instead of leaving.

 _Lazy savage_ , _napping her life away,_ he thinks dully, even as he knows it isn’t true. Leela is many things, but lazy is not one of them.

“Two days without food, Narvin. Even Time Lords need to eat.”

“Two days,” he repeats, incredulous. “I have not been in here for two days!”

She inhales deeply, and wrinkles her nose. The creases beside her eyes deepen, and for the first time he notices streaks of white gracing the hair at her temples. She is aging, at a speed that might outpace his own race toward death. “Your stink says otherwise.”

He glances down at his mussed robes, and tilts his head toward his armpit. Is he losing his sense of smell, in his decrepitude?

Leela is right. There is an … odor. The passage of time has inexorably led him to this final form, a rancid old man, with no titles and no dignity and no CIA retirement party, no universal chronometer engraved with his name to send him along to his golden years. How charming.

“You are moping,” she says, crossing her arms. She’s wearing her animal skins again, thank Rassilon. The sight of her in a chancellery guard uniform, during their conversation in the galley, had been unsettling. He has thought about it more often than is reasonable, vacillating between indignation and some other emotion he can’t pinpoint. Neither feeling is pleasant.

He huffs. “I am not.”

“You are mourning, then, like Romana,” she offers generously, like the label is a gift she has been waiting to hand him, along with the food.

“Thank you for the meal,” he repeats, as clear a dismissal as he can possibly give without shouting at her to leave. She deserves to be shouted at, for all this presumption, but it would take energy that he doesn’t have right now.

Leela moves forward, one arm raised as she navigates, not deterred in the slightest by his cold tone. Narvin sputters, shifting sideways to avoid being mowed down. She ends up sitting on his bunk, and he is powerless to stop her. “Your room is so small,” she says in wonder, leaning sideways and feeling her away along his unmade blankets and pathetic, flat pillow. “Romana’s is bigger than this, but mine is biggest. There is a fireplace.”

“There’s no need to exaggerate,” he says, because obviously she’s lying. He longs to deposit this unwanted food somewhere, but his bed is the only surface in the room, and Leela is occupying it. Which is not a sight he ever, in a thousand regenerations, imagined he would have the misfortune to encounter.

“Romana mourns Braxiatel, but I think she also mourns for the Gallifrey she lost. Your admiration for Braxiatel is not what keeps you in your quarters, Narvin. Do you mourn Gallifrey as well?”

“Yes. That’s it.” His tone is completely flat, as flat as his pillow.

“I have left behind more worlds, and more tribes, than I can speak of. In my experience, the only way to heal is to find a new tribe.”

“Thank you for the food,” he repeats helplessly, willing her to disappear.

“Romana and I lost the Doctor, after Zagreus. We shared a deep grief for that loss. Braxiatel was not the Doctor, but he was something similar to Romana, and I respect her need to grieve in the same way she grieved his brother.” Leela stands. “I understand your loss as well, Narvin. I will sleep once more, and then you will come out of this room, even if I have to drag you by your robes. It is unbecoming of the Coordinator of the CIA, to hide in his quarters.” She crosses the room in a few sure strides, and the door closes behind her.

 

~~~~~~

 

To Leela’s immense satisfaction, Narvin emerges of his own volition, before she sleeps again. She hears him shuffle to the galley, deposit the empty food tray, and come to find her at the opposite end of the Axis living area.

“K-9, is someone there?” she asks, much louder than necessary.

The robot dog’s cogs whir, and he beeps affirmatively. “Yes, Mistress. It is Narvin.”

“I thought we were alone in this place!” she gasps theatrically.

“Negative, Mistress.”

She turns in Narvin’s general direction. “Intruder, have you come for lessons with my knife?”

“I have nothing better to do, at present,” he admits. He sounds small.

“Nothing better than to wrestle a blind savage?” she teases with a smile, gentling her demeanor. “We could explore another Gallifrey, or lure Romana out of her room with promises of cake, if you prefer.” She does not intend to do either one of those things with a Narvin who smells as if he still has not bathed, but she does not say so. She has found Time Lords far more compliant when given the illusion of choice.

“Let’s get this over with,” he says.

Leela stands to face him, her smile faltering only a fraction. “Very well, as you wish.” She pulls her knife from its sheath, and shifts her grip so the blade sits comfortably in her palm. “You may borrow this.”

“I have my own.”

It’s thirty whole seconds before she gets close enough to realize that the foolish man has brought a dull knife from the galley.

“Will you defend yourself from a foul cheese, or a mannaberry paste, with this weapon?” she cackles.

“Our med station is adequate, but I’d rather not put it to the test with a stab wound.”

Leela thinks of Narvin after their first excursion from the Axis, trembling and weak from whatever torture Chancellor Dondequest and Surgeon-Master Rexus put him through. She mocked him mercilessly for his injuries, certain he would whine about his experience, as do all true cowards in the wake of battle. But he hadn’t done either. He has not spoken of his suffering, but Romana explained that he had been subjected to psychic scarring, in addition to his physical wounds. Romana did not know its specific nature, only that it was extensive; something similar to the wound Romana suffered in defeating Pandora inside the Matrix. Narvin bore his pain with quiet dignity, laid up for many  days in a medi-dais here on the Axis.

She doesn’t tease Narvin about the dull knife again.

Instead, she begins the first lesson. She expects impatience and condescension, given their roles in this moment and his tacit concession that she, a savage by his own frequent assessment, has something to teach him. That she excels at something and he does not. Time Lords are a recklessly proud people, and over time Leela has come to wonder if they are genetically incapable of experiencing humility. Perhaps the third strand of their DNA precludes it, or Rassilon’s multiverse-sized ego chased it right out of their collective racial consciousness.

But today, Narvin absorbs her instruction with subdued interest. He asks questions, and gamely allows her to adjust his fingers on the butter knife to show him a proper grip, and pull his arms to and fro as she demonstrates attacks and counter-attacks. He is not as strong or adept as Andred was, his reflexes slow from sitting behind a CIA desk for too long. But Leela has seen Narvin in battle many times, against Pandora’s forces on Gallifrey, and she knows he is not completely lacking in these skills; she also knows he prefers the staser, and dealing death beyond arm’s length.

Being close enough to share an enemy’s dying breath has its own sort of satisfaction. She doesn’t know if Narvin will ever be capable of enjoying such a moment, but she at least wants him as prepared as possible. For her own peace of mind, if nothing else, because as much as she values Romana’s friendship, she is not certain Romana would ever slip a knife between anyone’s ribs. Leela thinks her to be too much like the Doctor, choosing martyrdom before bloody murder.

Narvin, however, has the sort of base survival instinct and desire for self-preservation to do what needs to be done, when the time comes. He would slick his hands with an enemy’s blood; perhaps he would do the same to an ally, given the right circumstances. He is CIA, after all. Over the course of his life, his allegiance has changed more times than his face.

If Leela can train him to be a more effective warrior beside her on the battlefield, good. If she knows his fighting weaknesses because she has taught him and they have sparred, all the better, in case the day finally comes when he switches allegiances again.

K-9 stays with them throughout the lesson, offering pointers on Narvin’s form, when Leela cannot see that he has dropped his wrist like so, or left his neck unguarded. This particular kind of input, the Time Lord has no patience with.

“You are a good dog, K-9,” Leela tells him after Narvin has left, and his antennae buzz in delight as they waggle back and forth.

Later, in her quarters, she has stripped off her boots beside her fireplace and is wiggling her toes, basking in the warmth. The flames never go out, and she has felt her way around the entire room and found no supply of kindling to feed it. She has decided to enjoy it for the inexplicable Time Lord convenience that it is, like so many other things over the years.

Someone knocks at the door, and she reaches out to touch K-9 before calling, “Come in.”

“Rassilon’s ghost, you weren’t exaggerating about this room,” Narvin gasps.

“Greetings to you, as well.”

His footsteps move inside, padding quietly in a large circle, following the perimeter of her quarters. Inspecting and finding fault, no doubt.

“I am too tired to give you another lesson now,” she says. “I’m going to bed.”

He comes to a stop. “May I sit?”

She gestures to the room in general, and the obvious lack of chairs. There isn’t even a bed, only layers of soft carpets, and pillows scattered about. Just like the inside of an elder’s tent. “Anywhere you like, but only for a moment. As I said, I’m going to bed.”

He settles on the floor an arm’s length away, growing still and quiet. She allows it. Whether he’s studying her, or the room, or K-9, she has no idea and doesn’t care. He has at least bathed, and smells of soap. Her toes are warm beside the fire, her body relaxed from a good day’s exertion. The three of them remain in this pleasant companionship for a while, until Leela’s eyes begin to droop. Narvin finally takes a deep breath and rises to his feet.

“Good night, Leela.”

“Sleep well, Narvin.”

 

~~~~~~

 

The next day follows a similar pattern to the one before, except this time Narvin eats with her before and after their lesson. He showers and sits on his bunk in his long shorts, not tired in the slightest. He needs less sleep than a human, and irritation tickles at the back of his neck, that Leela has gone off to laze away the next few hours.

He considers knocking at Romana’s door, but cannot conjure any excuse he might give for the intrusion. There is no Presidential business to bring to her attention, no war orders to report fulfilled. He cannot imagine speaking to her frankly about about Braxiatel, or Gallifrey, or his single remaining life.

With Leela, he doesn’t need to find such excuses to knock. Things are simple, and silence is fine; the quiet companionship of sharing time and air, without any particular reason at all, except that he doesn’t want to be alone.

Alone is all Narvin has ever been. He can count on one hand the number of friends he’s had during his several hundred years; he’s always preferred the convenience of casual acquaintances. Social companionship without any emotional obligations, relationships easily dismissed when they become burdensome. The civil war was an anomaly, allowing him the experience of battlefield comradeship with his fellow rebels, and he decided he liked those deeper connections.

Now, in the Axis, as the dross of his life on Gallifrey has fallen away, his relationships with Brax and Romana and Leela, and even K-9, changed without his consent. The need he feels for these people is foreign and unsettling. These ties are not easily dismissed, even as the relationships become burdensome.

Even when he himself is the burden, as he is now.

Within a microspan, he’s standing at Leela’s door in clean robes.

“Come in, Narvin,” she calls. Can she really tell, even when he’s on the opposite side of a wall?

Lounging on the thick rug beside the fire again, she turns her head in his direction. She’s in her leather skins still, her hair damp from washing and pulled into a bun atop her head. Red curls spill out in a halo around her face. She lifts a glass toward him.

“Expecting me?” he asks, coming over to accept the drink and sit beside her. Somehow, somewhere in that galley, against all laws of probability, she found Orneilian wine. The vintage is probably atrocious, given where it’s been stored and the sort of chronon radiation it’s been exposed to.

“K-9 just left my room. He says he has found another portal, and another Gallifrey to explore. I thought you would come to discuss our strategy,” she replies, matter of fact.

“We aren’t exploring another Gallifrey without Romana,” he replies immediately.

“It is unbecoming, for the Coordinator of the CIA to hide inside the Axis,” she says, grinning and taking a long gulp from her own glass.

“Oh no. That won’t work on me again,” Narvin replies dourly. He sniffs the wine, then sips. It is exactly as awful as he’d imagined. He decides he doesn’t care, and takes a long swallow to match Leela’s.

“Very well, I will go on my own. You and K-9 can stay here, and maintain the Axis together. I long to feel the sun on my skin, and the wind in my face. This place is tiresome, with its cold walls and stale air.”

Narvin doesn’t reply. “How is Romana?”

Leela shrugs. “We do not talk. I leave her to her thoughts. I will go to her, when the time is right.”

“She isn’t coming with you tomorrow, then.”

“No.”

Narvin drinks again, glancing around for the bottle and a refill. Leela leans back on her elbows, face still turned toward the fire, and closes her eyes with a contented sigh. The wrinkles around her mouth deepen, and the tendrils of silver hair at her temples glint like a crown. Her lean, muscular body softens into a sort of relaxation she rarely indulges in, at least in his presence.

Andred’s choice to marry Leela always baffled Narvin. He understood the base carnal desires on principle, but rarely felt those things himself, and especially not in regards to lesser species like humans. The idea that such base carnal desires might drive a perfectly respectable Time Lord like Andred to bind himself – legally, emotionally, and morally – to someone like Leela, was as foreign and incomprehensible as the idea of choosing to sell his future regenerations. It just … wasn’t _done_.

He drags his eyes away from the dizzying length of her legs and stares at the fire. “I can leave, if you’re tired.”

“I am tired,” she admits, cradling the back of her head in her hands, empty gaze trained toward the white haze above them, what passes for a ceiling in the Axis. “There is more wine on the mantlepiece.”

He stands to retrieve the bottle, and when he turns around, she seems to have fallen asleep. Right here on the floor, in front of the fire, without a pillow or anything. How very on brand, for a savage. Narvin finds a blanket tossed to one side and drops it on top of her, purely out of concern for her health, he’s sure. She’s no good to him, if her fragile human body catches cold while she’s sleeping.

Leela sighs at the weight of the blanket and murmurs, “You may stay and finish the wine, if you like. Just so long as you’re not still in your cups when we set out on this new Gallifrey tomorrow.”

“Good night, Leela,” he says. He makes it all the way to the door and stops. He stares at the cold white metal, and he thinks about his Academy-style dorm cubicle, and he doesn’t push the button to open the door. He stands perfectly still until Leela’s soft snores drift up behind him.

First, he drains his glass in one gulp. Then he returns to the general vicinity of the fireplace and settles down. He doesn’t sleep, but he rests, and he is not alone.

The next day’s Gallifrey is controlled by the Pythia, which was never defeated and banished offworld in this timeline. Narvin and Leela’s stint there is short, and relatively uneventful. In spite of Leela’s initial excitement over the Pythian mystical influence on Gallifreyan culture, Narvin explains to her why this place could never provide a cure to the Dogma Virus: Time Lords never existed here. After stealing a few charm-laden bracelets from a marketplace, and teasing him until he agrees to put one on his wrist, she agrees to retreat to the Axis again.

Leela doesn’t offer another knife lesson, but she does disappear into Romana’s quarters with her spare bracelets. After K-9 intercepts him with details about another portal, Narvin sticks his head into Romana’s open door, to find the two of them chatting away like schoolgirls. For all his troubles, Leela calls him a coward in front of Romana, and he flings the word “savage” back at her with the sort of vocal muscle memory that feels beyond conscious control.

“Ah, that’s more like it. Narvin and Leela at each other’s throats, just like the good old days,” Romana says happily, rising from her chair with a sense of purpose and heading out the door, in search of K-9.

Leela’s smile matches her friend’s, and this familiar feeling – being on the outside – it weighs on Narvin heavier than usual. He does not strain the disappointment from his voice when he says, “That was your plan to get her out and about again? Insulting me?”

“It worked, did it not?” Leela replies, her grin turning sly. “Besides, insulting you is one of the few remaining pleasures I enjoy. You would not deny me that, would you?”

The sour taste in the back of his throat doesn’t fade for a while.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Canon Cliff's Notes for Gallifrey up to ep 4.3](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/36608517), if you want them.

**Set just after "Gallifrey 4.3: Annihilation"**  

 

Narvin lies prone on a medi-dais, chemicals pumping into his veins to dull the pain, and he slips in and out of a healing coma. During one of his waking moments, he opens his eyes to find K-9 gliding around the room, sticking his nose into various data ports.

“Where –” he croaks, then clears his dry throat. “Where are Leela and Romana?”

K-9 wheels around. “The mistresses have gone to explore another Gallifrey. They left me in charge, to maintain Axis stability and monitor your condition.” Somehow, this pile of cogs and circuits manages to sound smug.

They left without a word, before he had recovered?

The _robot dog_ is in charge?

K-9 continues his work, and Narvin feels the weight of isolation – true isolation, in a place with no time and no reality, an infinity away from other breathing creatures. The only company here is the ache of his injuries from the vampire-controlled Gallifrey and the looming specter of his inevitable death.

He closes his eyes and turns all his scattered concentration inward, searching desperately for a burning in his marrow or tingle in his fingertips – longing against all logic for any hint of an imminent regeneration.

There’s nothing except the cold sting of this sterile room, and his throbbing wounds.

The medi-dais whirs gently, responding to his elevated hearts-beat with a fresh round of tranquilizers. His head swims, and he realizes that the strange noise he keeps hearing is his own ragged breath, moving through broken lungs.

Would Leela and Romana even bother to fetch him, if they find a suitable new Gallifrey?

“You are at fifty-three point eight percent health, Narvin,” K-9 informs him, its nursing duty finished.

“Not even enough power to launch a TARDIS into the Vortex,” he mumbles, half-delirious, because he is a thing with no utility, like so much abandoned equipment.

“No TARDIS exists on the Axis,” K-9 retorts perkily, and leaves the room.

As he drifts back into his healing coma, Narvin clings to the thought that Leela and Romana will at least return to the Axis for K-9. It would be just plain rude to go to the trouble of fetching the dog, without collecting him as an afterthought.

The next time he opens his eyes, K-9 is gone. Leela has brought a chair from the galley and is seated beside his medi-dais. She wears a chancellery uniform again, her animal skins piled in her lap. He squints for a moment before realizing that she’s working patiently with a needle and thread to mend her clothes.

She came back. Which means Romana did, too. Leela chose to sit here and wait for him to wake up. He isn’t dead, and he isn’t alone. _We are a team_ , Leela had told him in that other Gallifrey, and she had meant it.

Heat blossoms in Narvin’s chest, the sensation so potent and unexpected that for an electric moment, he’s certain he’s finally regenerating. He waits, but no energy burns his marrow and no light bursts from his flesh. His euphoria fades somewhat, but the sight of Leela keeps its from disappearing entirely.

Eventually he croaks at her, “The Axis can recreate those, you know.”

Her head snaps up and she grins. “Finally! Romana forbade me to wake you, but I told her if I did not you would sleep until your hair turned grey.”

“Has it?” he asks, unconsciously reaching for his head. The movement doesn’t hurt much; the healing coma has done its work, and his injuries are nearly gone.

“It did not turn grey, but it did fall out in many places,” she replies, so deadpan that he almost believes her. She takes the thread between her teeth and pulls sharply, snapping it in half. “And I know very well that the Axis can make false skins, but they smell wrong. I prefer to mend my real ones.”

“What happened?” he asks. She doesn’t look injured, but it’s difficult to tell while she’s wrapped from head to toe in Time Lord clothes.

“On the last Gallifrey, we discovered very large birds of prey, and very angry Time Lords who had trained them for battle,” Leela replies. “Romana and I have been off the Axis three times while you slept, and each Gallifrey was worse than the last.”

“You’re both all right?”

“Of course we are all right!” She ties off one end of her broken thread and plunges the needle into another tear. “K-9 says you are at eighty-seven percent health. You could accompany us next time, if you are brave enough to come out from under those blankets.”

He makes a sputtering noise. “I am not hiding!”

Her eyes glint with humor; she is still teasing him, and he’s not well enough to retort properly.

“Your bruises are still quite colorful, and several of your cuts look as if they will make large scars.” She makes this pronouncement as if it’s a great compliment, instead of a damning catalogue of his mortality.

“How wonderful,” he grumbles.

“It is,” she replies, nodding sagely. “Now shall I tell you of the great bird that seized Romana in its talons, and how I killed it with a spear?”

He leans his head back, eyes closing. “I don’t suppose I could stop you, if I wanted to.”

“No, you could not,” she agrees, cheerful in her certainty.

Leela and Romana come and go from the med bay until he’s up and about again. He eats with his companions, and discusses with Romana in private the kind of lives they might find in an alternative version of their home – a wild hope, for a place where they’d fill similar roles to the ones they left on the original Gallifrey. A realistic admission, that they could never settle for a pastoral existence outside the Citadel. The possibilities in between are too numerous to account for, but as he considers them anyway, Narvin rejects out of hand anything that doesn’t accommodate the three of them together. After they all explore a Gallifrey populated entirely by simian versions of Time Lords, he begins a separate list of acceptable biologically divergent permutations. 

Leela has, for all intents and purposes, regenerated into her youthful body. Thinking about it in these terms is the only way Narvin can come to grips with the change – the restoration of her sight, the peeling back of time in her limbs and face, the golden tint to her blue eyes. She practically vibrates with renewed strength and energy, a predator in her prime, and it stirs something in his gut that feels like fear.

Like fear, but not quite.

When his last bruises have finally faded, and Romana is off in a control room somewhere with K-9, Leela knocks at his quarters. “I wanted to see with my eyes, because I could not believe it was as small as it felt. But indeed, it is the size of a tafelshrew’s burrow!”

He sighs. He cannot help it; exasperation is the only reasonable response to Leela’s opinions the majority of the time. “Tafelshrews hardly sleep on mattresses, or have metal grating on their floors.”

“You are jealous of my quarters.”

One corner of his mouth twitches. She sees it, her expression brightening in satisfaction.

The worst thing about Leela regaining her sight is that she can read his face all the time, now. He has to be so careful; moderating his vocal tones is not enough.

One eyebrow lifted, her gaze flickers across everything in the tiny room, including him, and she laughs. “You may visit me anytime you wish to escape your burrow, Narvin.”

Before he can form an answer, she turns on her heel and the door closes behind her.

As Coordinator of the CIA, Narvin could not afford to be predictable. Canny and loyal to his president, always. But predictability would get him killed – politically, professionally, physically, an infinite variety of deaths.

Standing outside of Leela’s door an embarrassingly short time later, Narvin wrestles with the question of whether this behavior might become too predictable, if he continues to indulge himself over time. Indulging this need for company, and for Leela’s company in particular, feels like the exact sort of thing that could get him killed one day.

Is it any more dangerous than the allegiance he feels to Romana, and his unshakeable confidence in her ability to rule Gallifrey properly? His loyalty to her leadership, and the way those convictions dictate his behavior, when she needs something?

Before he reasons his way to a conclusion, Leela opens the door. “It has been a long day, has it not? I hoped you would bring wine!”

He has, in fact, brought a bottle of chronon-spoiled Orneilian wine, the only kind available on the Axis.

Predictable. Complacent, perhaps. Dangerous, certainly.

“Romana and K-9 are re-cal-ib-rating something,” Leela says, enunciating the technical word carefully as she plucks the bottle from his hand. “If they do not require your assistance, we will share this.”

In the same way that, weeks ago, Narvin could not summon the physical energy to put on his clothes or leave his quarters, right now the beep of the medi-dais still echoes in his ear, and he cannot summon the emotional fortitude to don his Coordinator façade and leave. 

After a bottle of wine shared companionable silence, they lay beside each other on the thick carpet, feet toward the fire.

“You didn’t have to spend so much time in the med bay, during my convalescence,” Narvin says.

“I spent far more time hunting big lizards with Romana, two Gallifreys ago, than I spent at your bedside.” 

“Gargantosaurs,” he supplies helpfully.

“As I said, big lizards,” she repeats, rolling her eyes and twirling the wine glass between her fingers. “If my company bothered you, you could have sent me away.”

“No, I meant” – he swallows – “I was trying to thank you. So. Thank you.”

She places the empty glass on the floor and comes up onto an elbow. “This final body of yours and its scars are a map of your moments of bravery, as few as they may be. Romana may yet change her face someday, and does not understand the significance of such landmarks of the flesh, for those of us who have only one life. It was important to honor your new scars, and the cost at which they came. There is no need for thanks.” Without any pomp or ceremony, she resumes her previous position, staring at the ceiling.

What does one say in reply to a speech such as that? Narvin considers it for a very long time. “Whether thanks are needed or not, I still wanted to say them.”

The corner of her mouth curls a fraction, but she doesn’t look at him.

The white ceiling above them is hazy, as if he might reach up far enough and touch nothing at all. The Axis is an unsettling place, more often than not. No air, no time, no reality, except when its occupants require those things. And in this particular moment, Narvin is sharply aware of the fact that nothing in Leela’s room is real. No wool scent from the dusty carpets, no soot on the fireplace, no smoke from the flames.

Nothing is real, except himself and this human. This human who has actively protected him and saved his life an embarrassing number of times, for the short span he's known her; this human who doesn't look at him any differently, or hold him in lesser esteem, now that she knows he can never regenerate. And here in this unreal place, this very real and very human woman smells different than she did before.

His senses are not as finely tuned as Leela's, especially since her encounter with Magistrix Borusa and the renewal of her body. But he has a Time Lord’s ability to dissect objects by scent and taste, down to their chemical compounds. It's a fundamental fieldwork skill, for a Celestial Intervention Agent; not as essential as sensing temporal anomalies and fixed points, but part of basic training.

Maybe, in light of his recent inability to defend himself in the field like a proper CIA agent, Narvin wants to prove he’s still competent at basic chemical identification.

Maybe he’s aching to re-create that burst of heat in his chest, the one he felt in med bay when he realized Leela and Romana had come back for him, because it was so much like the beginning of regeneration – a sensation he thought he’d lost forever.

Maybe this is just the predictable, complacent conclusion of all his recent self-indulgence.

He rolls onto his side, propped up on his elbow, and inhales slowly. Her pheromones are more youthful and plentiful, certainly. More primal, perhaps.

 

~~~~~~

 

Leela watches Narvin as he leans closer, eyes closed, moving as though he’s sleepwalking. Has he entered some strange Time Lord trance?

“Narvin?” she says, low and cautious.

His eyes open, and his bottom lip sticks out. He doesn’t withdraw. “Yes?”

“Are you … all right?” she hazards. Leela is no naïf, she knows what the look on his face means. She simply cannot fathom Narvin, of all the creatures in all the universes, wearing that look in proximity to her. It has certainly never occurred to her to look at him in such a way. Is he drunk, on so little wine? Did he find ginger beer in the galley, as well?

He swallows, and she can practically hear his two hearts thudding. “You are different, since you accepted Magistrix Borusa’s offer.”

She smiles reflexively at the compliment, stretching the toned muscles in her legs. She feels like she might leap over a wall, if she wished. “It is good, is it not?”

“I am not used to it.” The quietest clearing of his throat. “May I – may I try something? An experiment?”

She could mock him and push him away. She could kill him with her bare hands before he lifts a finger in defense. Instead she indulges her own curiosity, remaining prone, her amusement on full display. “You want me to be your lab creature, like the pig-rats used to breed the Dogma Virus?”

His cheeks flush as his eyes pop open wide. “No, of course not! I didn’t mean anything like –”

“I am not afraid,” she laughs, threading her fingers over her belly. “You may try your experiment.”

Somehow his blush deepens, and his eyelids flutter closed. He inhales, slowly and deliberately, bringing his nose to the head of her shoulder. A second deep breath as he shifts closer, leaning across her body.

Physical proximity to Narvin is not novel to Leela. During the war, she carried him out of a bombed-out Artron Forum, dragging his half-dead body to medical aid even though she was newly blind. Their knife lessons here on the Axis were chest-to-chest, arms and legs tangling as they moved through attacks and counter-attacks.

But none of those moments felt like this, tingles dancing across the nape of her neck and breath tight in her chest. Killing is one form of intimacy, and the last few years have left her glutted with it. As Narvin positions himself atop her and nuzzles into her neck, hands planted beside her arms, a knee between her legs, she realizes exactly how ravenous she is for this other kind of intimacy.

Ravenous or not, this is Narvin – _Narvin!_ – and the instinct to tease him about what he’s doing, to ask if he needs instruction or wants her to draw him a diagram, is overwhelming.

Leela bites her lip and tips her head to the side, exposing her throat to his attentions. Her hands find his hips, to draw him closer.

He freezes at her touch, body rigid. “Would you mind terribly – could you please – just a moment?”

Somehow she deciphers his strangled gibberish and, content to let him continue, her hands fall away.

“Thank you.”

His lips brush her collarbone once, then he retraces the path, this time the tip of his tongue leaving a cool trail behind. Leela’s eyes fall closed, and she hums in pleasure. Some of the more open-minded Gallifreyans from the Citadel might have respected her for her fighting abilities, and her strategy in battle. Even so, Andred’s first death was long ago, and since then no one besides Romana has regarded her as a true equal. Perhaps there would have been another to share her bed beyond the Citadel, with the Outsiders, if Romana had not called her back to deal with the crisis on Gryben. Certainly none of these proud Time Lords would have considered her a suitable mate.

Narvin might think he is performing an experiment, but Leela has decided he is wrong; this is a test. Not for him, or devised by him on purpose, but an opportunity to test herself and her ability to control her new, refreshed body. She has already tested her new tongue, with meals eaten on the Axis and their journeys outside; she has tested her new legs, running miles across the fields of red grass on foreign Gallifreys; she has tested her hands, soaking them in blood when circumstances called for a kill.

She has not had what Narvin is offering in a very long time, and in her reinvigorated body, every sensation is bigger, and stronger, and more urgent. Not only from the nerve endings in her shoulder, as he kisses and sucks his way across her skin like he has not tasted food since his last regeneration, but also in the way her brain processes the sensations and urges her to action. All of her instinct, which has guided her whole life, has been distilled and amplified. Sometimes it overwhelms her and she’s nervous of what she might do, what she’s capable of.

Right now, she’s capable of flipping Narvin onto his back, tearing his ridiculous CIA robes to ribbons before he hits the ground, and riding him until he breaks beneath her. That would be the easy path, because it is the strongest form of instinct, driven by chemicals in her blood.

Leela’s quieter instinct, the more disciplined path, whispers for her to lie still and enjoy herself as he continues this strange, pleasant ritual he is performing. Methodical at first, now tender, he shifts down her body, following the line of her arm, pausing to rest his lips against the fragile skin in the crook of her elbow, and the pulse at her wrist.  He takes his time with her left hand, pressing kisses into each fingertip, and then her palm, his tongue as soft as his breath.

Before he can move on, she stretches her fingers to cup his cheek and brushes her thumb across his lips. His eyelids flutter, but don’t open.

He might sigh her name, or perhaps not. Perhaps it was only another exhale.

To her mild irritation, Narvin’s hands are a model of Time Lord discipline, never wandering or groping. Delicately, he bends her arm and works his way back to her shoulder. The pressure of his lips against her skin has changed, from a gentle brush to something firmer, more sure of its intention. When he centers himself over her body again, following the line of her collarbone to the spot in the hollow of her neck, she decides she is done with his ritual, and she’s ready to perform her own, instead.

Seizing his head in her hands, her fingernails scraping through his short hair, she pulls him up to kiss him properly. Sucking his bottom lip between her own, she eases his mouth open so her tongue finds his. His stubble prickles her chin, and she curls her fingers into his scalp and arches her back, bringing their bodies together. He makes a noise in his throat and finally releases his full weight against her, hips angling just so, their legs tangling together.

Delighted at the increased friction, she groans against his mouth. The sound breaks the last bit of his discipline and his hands finally touch her properly, fingers spreading around the back of her thigh to hold her tight against his hips. For a long microspan his lips and tongue move with hers, his breath erratic. But then she whispers his name, an encouraging sound, and he twitches like someone waking from a deep sleep. When he looks at her, his pupils so dilated that they've nearly swallowed his irises, she can practically she her reflection in their black depths.

He swallows with a dry clicking sound and climbs off of her body, shifting onto his back and throwing a robed arm partially over his face, shielding himself. Lying prone, even his thick robes can’t disguise his desire.

"I declare your experiment a success," Leela says, rolling over atop him and straddling his hips.  

“A valid experiment would have accounted for the multiple confounding variables," he groans. "I have no control to compare against. One cannot simply decide they like the results and declare an experiment a success.”

She plucks his arm from his face and pins both wrists above his head. Undulating against his robes, and the erection beneath them, causes his hips to rise automatically in response, and he stares up at her with wide, bewildered eyes. He is flushed from scalp to neck, across the few exposed bits of his skin she can see. An over-ripe berry, ready to fall from the tree.

“‘Confounding variables’? Is this CIA lovemaking talk? You are a strange one,” she says, leaning down to kiss him again. She decides she likes his soft lips very much; the bottom one in particular fits nicely between her teeth. Nipping and licking the length of his jaw, she brings her mouth to his ear. Her voice is husky with promise: “I will teach you new words, Time Lord.”

He makes a choking sound. “Leela, wait.”

“Why?”

“Stop,” he begs again, wiggling helplessly beneath her. She releases his wrists and shifts off his body, confused. 

“Narvin?”

Staring at the misty ceiling, he scrubs his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’ll need rest, before our next trip off the Axis.”

He’s on his feet before she can protest. She rises, too, taking a few steps after him.

“Have I offended you?”

At the door, he pauses long enough to say, “I won’t bother you again.”

“Bother me?” she calls at his back. The door closes. “ _Bother me?!_ ”

After a moment’s consideration, washed head to toe with a dizzying mix of emotions, Leela decides that she is, in fact, _incredibly_ bothered.

 

~~~~~~

 

Narvin makes it the four steps from Leela’s door to his own, and locks himself inside. He yanks off his damp robes and crams them into the square trash receptacle in the wall, then stumbles into the microscopic ensuite lavatory. Unwilling to look at himself in the mirror, he keeps his eyes down as he turns on the shower and steps into the sonically augmented liquid. It dances across his skin, micro-vibrations scrubbing away every particle of Leela from his lips and hands and hair.

 _I was unprepared. It isn’t a sensation I enjoy,_ he had told her after they were ambushed on the bioluminescent Gallifrey. That was a lie. He had been afraid then, pure and simple, just like he is now. Afraid of death and afraid of his own weakness; afraid of his reliance on the people around him and afraid of his inexorable, growing need for them. What sort of preparation could steel him for the effect Leela has had, in particular? He told himself it was scientific curiosity, a desire to catalog her alien biochemistry; melatonin and triiodothyronine and a half dozen other natural compounds, swirling in her human body like a cocktail. But the more he tasted her, the more her system flooded with other hormones – oxytocin and dopamine and testosterone – and the excuses he had given himself for touching her cracked like the flimsy façade they were, along with his self-control.

He’d been ambushed by his own want – his _desire_. Not just a simple physical desire to fuck, as vulgar as it was, but the even stronger emotional desire to fuck Leela, in particular. The revelation of this new weakness of his, and his accompanying humiliation, weigh so heavily that he stops breathing here in this quietly humming shower, and his respiratory bypass kicks in.

He can still taste her. He can still smell her, and hear the noises she made. She might as well be here with him, for all the good this shower is doing.

His cock aches, exquisitely needy no matter what sort of conscious control he attempts to exert over it. In desperation, for a valiant microspan he tries to distract himself, silently reciting Pandak’s Order of Temporal Cartographical Principles. His concentration gives out at the twelfth magnitude of gravity-singularity effects. Here in this re-creation of his Academy cubicle, like a boy incapable of mastering the basic biological impulses of his first body, he takes himself in hand.

When Narvin emerges from his quarters to join his companions in reconnoitering another Gallifrey, Leela gives him a flat look and says nothing. He has put on clean CIA robes, and using his authority as CIA Coordinator, has decided that the last few hours, and all of his weak-willed mortality-fuelled transgressions, might as well have been cast into the Oubliette of Eternity.

Romana thinks they are fighting again, and chides them goodnaturedly as they all step through the portal together. Perhaps, had Narvin known this would be the last time he saw Leela for months, he would have handled it differently.

Perhaps, but probably not.

As ever, the accusation pops into his head in her voice: _Coward._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Canon Cliff's Notes for Gallifrey through ep 5.2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/36608517), if you want them.

** Set at the end of “Gallifrey 5.1: Emancipation”  **

 

The most direct route from Allora’s maximum-security cell to Narvin’s Chancellery office does not pass by the Panopticon, but his steps take him there anyway. His bodyguard trails silently, not commenting on the deviation, because she’s a quick study and has learned not to ask stupid questions, especially when he’s in this sort of mood.

Narvin stands in a delegate gallery in the Panopticon wall, just above the main floor. Rain patters down from the stratospheric height of the ceiling – the tower stretches far enough into the sky that it periodically develops its own weather patterns, enclosed though it is. A fleet of automated floor cleaners whir into action, perpetually on standby for just such a moment, mopping and drying as quickly as the rain falls. All of the other delegate galleries, stacked on top of each other from floor to clouds, are dark and empty. The Council is not in session, but a few aides and guards mill around the chamber floor, shoulders hunched against the damp as they bustle from one duty to the next.

Yesterday, when Castellan Slyne freed Narvin from his prison cell and took possession of Allora’s confessional tape, to enter it into the public record and exonerate Narvin from the coup plot, Narvin immediately found a fresh set of Chancellor’s robes to wear. He even put on the ridiculous, oversized collar, and hasn’t taken it off since. As much as he loathes these gaudy heliotrope clothes, the gesture is a sartorial assertion of his innocence and Romana’s confidence in him as second-in-command; a bold reclamation of his position and a way to push back against any public perception of weakness.

He has just finished his paperwork duty, filing the formal indictment against Allora for masterminding the attack on Leela and the attempted coup against Romana. He thickened out the legal case against her with several other charges, as well – she’d been the sort to kick kittens on the weekend, as are most of the Regenerators on this brutal version of Gallifrey. As it is, Narvin is certain he’ll have Allora locked away for the rest of her lives in the darkest maximum-security cell he can find.

His satisfaction over Allora’s plight would be smug and self-congratulatory, if he wasn’t saturated with regret that he hadn’t been clever enough to prevent Leela from being injured in the first place. When Allora initially reached out with an overture of alliance, he recognized it for the ploy it truly was; when Romana ordered him to allow Allora to overplay her hand, he’d done all he could to brace for the inevitable fallout. He prepared for dozens of scenarios, and in almost every one he considered the risk to Leela to be low. She was an obvious target – too obvious for anyone with half a brain to choose, if they were playing an effective long game. Narvin had put every conceivable safeguard in place, but he had vastly overestimated Allora’s intellect, and Leela ended up unconscious and bloodied in a medical facility.

Romana had made the choice not to tell her; Narvin had agreed with her caution, concerned about Leela’s reliance on her advisor, Valyes. If Leela had known about the danger, though, she might have protected herself; if Narvin had pushed back on Romana’s decision, she might not have been hurt. The fact that Valyes is now in a cell next to Allora does nothing to assuage the guilt pricking his conscience. In retrospect there are a half-dozen ways he could have kept Leela safe, if he had just been clear-headed and had his priorities better sorted.

It's that pricking sensation that keeps him here, alone in the Panopticon, even as Romana is saying her farewells to Leela. Romana had admitted to him that she didn't know how long it would be until they saw her again, if at all.

If he squints just right at the damp room in front of him, the pennants and corbels blur, and this place looks exactly like home. Nine months ago, this chamber was the last place he, Romana, and Leela were together, before the Axis disappeared, along with any hope of escape. Leela had been raw and brutally honest with her emotions that day, shouting her grief over the loss of K-9 and her heartbreak over Romana’s choices that led them here. When she left the Citadel, she didn’t spare a single breath on words for him. The memory of it needles at him occasionally, on those rare times when he fails to keep himself busy enough, and he gets a decent night’s sleep.

Since they were stranded here, it has been the most natural thing in the universe to put his nose to the grindstone of state, for his own sake and for Romana’s presidency. He donned the robes of High Chancellor at her command. He immediately set about improving and expanding the network of spies and informants that his doppelganger left behind, until it was up to his original Gallifrey’s CIA standards, doing whatever was necessary to keep atop this volatile political landscape. He marks each day by meetings in his planner instead of spans of the clock. From the moment he wakes to the moment he falls asleep, every interaction is a dance, empowering Romana’s allies and disenfranchising her enemies.

Leela is indisputably superior at fighting hand-to-hand, but Narvin is a master of this kind of political and bureaucratic combat.

He has kept himself busy in order to survive, but sitting for days in a prison cell stripped him of that defense mechanism. He had nothing to look at but stark grey walls, nothing to distract from the memory of Leela lying on a medi-dais, unconscious and bloody. She hadn’t even woken up before the chancellery guards hauled him away. For a time, he wasn’t certain she had survived.

Nine months ago, when Leela first led the ex-slaves out of the Capitol and stayed with them as their leader, Narvin thought he and Romana had lost her, and he decided he could settle into to life in the Capitol regardless. After all, before Pandora’s civil war he’d lived hundreds of years without Leela’s daily presence and been just fine, thank you very much. But parting on that day wasn’t a true loss; he hadn’t understood how essential it was to his peace of mind, knowing that she was alive somewhere, even if it wasn’t near him. The possibility of losing her, properly and forever, has brought the contrast in sharp relief.

He has called her savage so often over the years, but their stint on this version of Gallifrey has shown him the depths of savagery his own species is capable of – true savagery, without heart or soul or compassion. Leela might be human, and wear animal skins, and speak Gallifreyan with an accent, and be quick to reach for her knife to solve a situation, but her heart (singular though it may be) is a different thing entirely.

The rain patters to a stop, and the robotic mops retreat, and stillness descends on the Panopticon. Narvin’s eyes pull into focus again. The room comes into sharp relief, with its mis-colored pennants and misshapen corbels – _a_ Panopticon, but not _the_ Panopticon.

In the quiet, he hears himself whisper the word, “Savage.” And like a liturgy, the word _coward_ bounces back from the depths of his mind, in Leela’s voice as always.

If she isn’t the thing he thought her to be for so very long, then perhaps he doesn’t have to be, either.

With a deep breath, he strides out of the Panopticon, and his bodyguard trails along. His steps don’t take him to his office, or the next meeting on his schedule. Driven by that pricking in his conscience, he makes a beeline for one of the secret corridors linking this parliamentary chamber with Romana’s presidential offices. It also links to the presidential transport pad, the most secure departure point on Gallifrey, the only place he’d decided would be acceptable for Leela to use when the time came for her to return to Mancipia.

Running is out of the question, of course. It’s unseemly and unwise, for a number of reasons. If he doesn’t make it to the transport pad before her ship leaves, then he won’t have to (get to) say the words.

When he flings open the hidden panel door in Romana’s antechamber, her secretary pops to his feet in alarm. “Lord Chancellor! The Supreme Leader just came from the transport pad, shall I tell her you’re –”

“Don’t bother,” Narvin interrupts, not even looking at him. He veers right, through another corridor, his bodyguard practically jogging to keep up. A few chancellery guards loiter along the walls, snapping to attention as he sweeps past. When the door at the end of the space slides open, a rush of wind and roar of engines hit him like a physical blow. He instinctively reaches for his collar, to stop it from flying off and hitting the guard behind him.

Leela limps alone across the transport pad toward her waiting ship. Castellan Slyne and a few of his men stand watch from the door, to ensure her departure.

“Lord Chancellor,” Slyne says in his usual unctuous tone, obviously surprised.

“Castellan,” Narvin replies sharply, indicating with a wave for his bodyguard to stay with the others while he goes on alone.

Romana has already retreated inside, but even with so few people left outside there’s little privacy here in the open, and he tries to maintain some semblance of dignity as he speedwalks after Leela. His enormous Chancellor’s collar chafes his neck and smacks the back of his head with each step; he longs to fling it off the side of the building.

“Leela, wait!” he calls, once he’s sure he’s far enough away from the guards so his voice won’t carry. She turns to regard him.

Bruises mar her face, lacerations scabbed across her cheeks and hands. One of her eyes is still swollen half shut. She wears the same tight trousers and loose blouse and cowl she’s had on since she arrived, all in blues and browns. She folds her arms, tongue unconsciously touching her split lip. It dawns on him that she’s irritated at him. “Narvin! I did not expect you. Romana said you were busy and could not come to see me off. I told her to say goodbye for me.”

“I finished filing charges against Allora and Valyes,” he replies. “But that’s not what I came to tell you.”

She glances at the transport and the waiting pilot, and says, “I have something to tell you first.” He closes his mouth and adjusts his grip on his collar, to keep it from flying off in the wind. “I never believed you were the one who set the explosives, even after you were arrested. You may occasionally be a coward, but I knew you better than to think you an assassin.”

“I’m – I’m very glad to hear it,” he admits. Her words are so unexpected and generous, his left hand twitches in a small flapping motion, and he’s unsure what to look at. His cheeks are cold, and he can’t be certain what the expression on his face betrays, but Leela’s own expression softens considerably.

“And what did you come running out here to say to me?” she asks.

“I was not running. It wouldn’t even qualify as a brisk walk if  –” He inhales, shifts gears, blurts out, “I’m sorry.” This exchange isn’t nearly as elegant or composed as he rehearsed, in his cell. The roar of the vehicle prevents anyone besides Leela from hearing, at least. _I will teach you new words, Time Lord,_ she whispered in his ear almost a year ago, and these new words come out of his mouth far more easily than he imagined they would. Even when he hasn't seen her for months on end, she still manages to waltz right into his conscience and nudge the furniture around to her liking.

She lifts a single eyebrow. “Sorry for what, Narvin?”

Where to even start? If he thinks on it too long, the list snowballs, and that will never do. They don’t have the time, and he doesn’t have the emotional perseverance. So he begins at the most recent thing, and lets it go at that: “That you were the one caught up in all this. That I wasn’t clever enough to … well. You told me once that my scars were badges of honor. The ones you earned this week are a credit to your bravery.”

She snorts a laugh and gestures at her swollen eye. “I was ambushed in an alley by an explosive device. I never drew my knife. There is no fight in that, and no honor.”

He sucks in a breath, stretching for the right thing to say. “You fight on behalf of the freed slaves of Mancipia. The fact that you came back to the Citadel for their sake is proof of that. You pay them honor with your sacrifices, and the scars those sacrifices leave.” He steps back with a small gesture. “Safe travels, Envoy Leela.”

The smile on her face makes him forget about the cold wind whipping his robes, and the intolerable roar of the ship beside them. “Goodbye, Narvin.”

He turns to leave before her transport takes off, and he doesn’t let himself look back.

When he re-enters the presidential office complex, Castellan Slyne surveys him with a calculating look. “Is everything alright, Lord Chancellor?”

“A few last-minute diplomatic issues to resolve,” Narvin replies with a shake of his head. “I'll make sure everything is taken care of.” He already has a handful of informants inside Mancipia’s township, but within a week he’s found someone in Leela’s inner circle to deliver reports personally, to his ears only, on her health and well-being.

 

~~~~~~

 

**Set sometime between "Gallifrey 5.2: Evolution" and "Gallifrey 5.3: Arbitration"**

 

When they first left the Capitol, Leela and the ex-slaves lived in shacks and tents. Over time their number swelled, as newly freed Gallifreyans joined them from all corners of Wild Endeavor, and the ramshackle Outsider city became unwieldy. For the sake of safety and manageable sanitation, Leela and the other leaders voted to divide into smaller townships, scattering themselves further into the Outlands. As the foremost Outsider settlement, with the largest population, Mancipia still sits on the site of the original ex-slave camp.

It is strange, then, that even though she is surrounded by thousands of her people, Leela sits alone on the day of Gallifrey’s presidential election, watching her small vidscreen as the poll results roll in. She spearheaded the effort to guarantee her people the right to vote in this historic election, after all; she has spent countless months wrangling with the Regenerators in the Capitol, campaigning for the enfranchisement of the ex-slaves.

Her success, and the enfranchisement of her people, was formalized in a speech by President Romana before the election began. The townships roundly celebrated with a week-long bacchanal, which depleted the communal food stores and irritated Leela. But she understood the Outsiders’ need to let loose, and so she let them have their fun, even as she posted guards to moderate the distribution of food and alcohol.

Right now, as the election results unfold, a massive crowd throngs Mancipia’s main square to watch the enormous vidscreen erected atop the town hall for the occasion, just a block away from Leela’s house. She can hear them in the streets outside her closed windows, cheering and popping bottles of rotgut as the vidcast commentators forecast Romana’s re-election victory. There is no Matrix on this Gallifrey, so the tallying process has been almost as slow as it was during the election between Darkel and Matthias and Romana, on their one true Gallifrey before the Dogma Virus claimed so many victims.

Leela’s own small vidscreen, a piece of ancient tech salvaged from the Capitol city’s piles of refuse and repaired by an ex-slave who had been owned by the Tech Guild, is the only illumination in her den as she watches scenes broadcast from Pandak Square, and the crowd of Regenerators gathered inside the Capitol to witness the election results.

Romana stands on a balcony above the throng, along with the two other candidates. She wears the white robes and collar of her Presidential office, and she has the serene look of a Time Lady who feels sure of victory. The early poll reports reflect that certainty, as well. She holds herself with the composure of a wolf loping through its territory, and Leela cannot help but imagine what she says, when she occasionally turns to speak with the other candidates.

 _Their enthusiasm does rather knock one back, doesn’t it?_ she’d murmur to the man next to her, words as sharp craftsman-forged blade sliding between his ribs. _Remarkable how that enthusiasm comes together in the presence of true leadership._

Now and then, the cameras pan in a certain direction and Leela catches a glimpse of Narvin just inside the balcony doors. He also wears his Chancellor’s robes, although his composure is slightly less assured than Romana’s. Romana had given him the responsibility of running her re-election campaign, and he’d done an admirable job. Two separate publicity techniques, one for the Regenerators touting Romana’s success in managing the Outsiders, her ability to maintain order, her clear-headed leadership in the midst of this new social chaos. The second campaign, aimed at the Outsiders themselves, emphasized Romana’s perpetual championing of freed slaves’ rights, and her progressive platform aimed at equalizing the playing field.

Narvin wrote to her often, in the early months of the campaign. First to ask for her endorsement of Romana’s candidacy – as if that would ever be in question. Second to ask her strategic advice in courting the vote of the various ex-slave Townships. This correspondence was simple and rarely strayed into personal matters, probably because he assumed she needed someone to read the letters to her, and to transcribe her reply. She found herself looking forward to receiving them, nonetheless.

Often he included phrases designed for her alone – a reference to Commentator Antimon or Interrogator Generals who don’t exist on this Gallifrey. He mentioned these things to remind her of their history together, in a way no one else would understand even if they intercepted the letters. Knowing Narvin as well as she does, she assumed it more of a manipulation tactic than a genuinely sentimental gesture toward an old friend. But all of the fury she has harbored against Romana and Narvin for so long has begun to soften, and she lingered over these reminders almost as if they were love letters, instead of political missives.

On Leela’s small, flickering vidscreen, Romana waves to the people in the square, and a tinny cheer comes through the speaker as the commentator reads the final vote: Romana has won by a small but decisive margin. Without the Outsiders’ support, she would have lost to Lady Betraxia, the new head of the Mining Guild.

Outside Leela’s house, in the Mancipian square, the crowd’s victorious shouting crescendos.

The defeated candidates withdraw into the building, and Narvin joins Romana on the balcony, instead. He doesn’t wave at the crowd, his hands clasped in front of his robe, but he beams at the Capitol in general, looking for all the world like the cat who got the cream.

He leans down to whisper something in Romana’s ear. _I told you this was entirely under control_ , Leela imagines he says in that smug tone of his. Narvin being Narvin, it would probably be something even more self-satisfied:  _Where ever would you be without me, my Lady President? Ah, I mean my Supreme Leader._

Romana elbows him in the ribs, grinning enormously, and says something in reply. _I never doubted you,_ in a voice that means she doubted quite thoroughly. Or perhaps something gentler: _I’d have retired with dignity to Capari, and spent my days sleeping in the shade of a palm-willow tree. But I couldn’t leave you here in the Captiol unsupervised, now could I?_

Their conversation ends, and with a single nod of acknowledgment to the crowd, Narvin steps back and allows Romana the full spotlight of attention.

Leela hasn’t seen either one of them in so long. What might they say to her, if she was on that balcony? She would not stand beside Romana in the foreground; her place would be with Narvin in the shadows, protecting Romana’s back.

If Leela steps outside of her home and into the Mancipian streets, she will be greeted with the exact same fervor Romana is receiving in the Capitol. They will cheer and carry her on their shoulders into the square, and chant at her until she makes pretty words to inspire and congratulate them. She has no desire to bask in the heat of such attention, and more than anything this moment drives home how much she deeply misses Romana and Narvin. The three of them worked together to achieve this victory, each of them playing their part to guarantee Romana’s reelection, and Leela is the only one not there to celebrate properly. _We are a team_ , she had told Narvin on the Axis over a year ago. And yet they are all so far apart, in so many ways.

A knock at her front door pulls her from her morose reverie. It takes some effort to drag her attention from the two people on the balcony over Pandak Square, but she rises from the chair and goes to answer.

Jamalen stands outside, revelers drinking and dancing in the street behind him. Without waiting for an invitation, he steps inside and sweeps her into an embrace.

“We did it!” he crows, spinning her around. She holds onto him out of instinct, so she won’t fall when he finally puts her back on her feet. “Romana won! Because of us! They can’t ignore us any more, Leela! _We did it_!”

“We did,” she laughs.

Jamalen holds onto her a moment too long, his hands lingering in the same way his gaze tends to linger when the two of them spend their days sorting out Mancipia’s legislative and administrative affairs. When he places her back onto her feet, he doesn’t step away. His brown eyes glitter in the light from the vidscreen behind her, his lips parted slightly as he gazes at her mouth.

She saved Jamalen’s life during a scuffle with the Mining Guild in the early days of their Mancipian Township, and over time his gratitude has morphed into something more passionate, almost worshipful. After all, she single-handedly led the rebellion that overturned a millennia’s worth of servitude for his people. She’s the exotic, impossible creature from beyond the stars, whose warm touch and strange pulse testify to her non-Gallifreyan origins.

He is a good man; of that Leela has no doubt. He is kind, and clever, and thoughtful. Whatever he feels for her, he has never overstepped himself or made her feel uncomfortable, not in the slightest. But lately his desire for her has been on fuller display, his longings right on the tip of his tongue.

In this moment, with Romana and Narvin so far away, Leela’s loneliness feels like a puncture wound in her heart, leaking slowly but draining the life from her nonetheless. What harm would there be in taking Jamalen to her bed? He’d be gentle, if perhaps nervous; he’d worship her until her dying day, if she allowed him. Even if she does not return Jamalen’s affection, she could accept his comfort and companionship.

He brings a hand up, and cups her cheek. The gesture, and the passion it promises, sends warmth tingling across the back of her neck. It would be so easy to give him what he wants, and take what she wants in return, even if those things are not the same.

So easy and so unkind, to use him in such a way.

Leela steps back, putting distance between them. She does not want a lopsided affair, to be joined with someone who sees her as an elder, who worships her instead of regarding her as an equal.

His hand drops and a brief, crestfallen look passes over his face. Clearing his throat, he says, “You should join us, in the square. They have been chanting your name, on and off, for a while.”

“I do not wish to make speeches tonight,” she replies. “I trust you to say the right words for now. I shall speak to the people in the morning, about the steps we take from here to petition Supreme Leader Romana for the right to tax those who transport goods through the Vaterian Pass.”

“If that’s what you want.” He gives a nod, his gaze fixed on a mote of dust just over her left shoulder.

“It is,” she says. “Thank you, Jamalen. You deserve credit for what happened today. Go outside to speak to the people, and let them honor you as you deserve.”

He nods again, meeting her eyes for a fleeting moment. “We couldn’t do this without you. _I_ couldn’t do it without you.”

“You are stronger than you think,” she replies with a smile.

Shuffling his feet, he backs toward the door. “As are you, Leela. Sleep well in our victory, I’ll see you in the morning.”

Leela waits until the door closes behind him, and then turns back to the small vidscreen. Narvin’s face fills the screen, and for once he doesn’t look dour or irritated in the slightest at having to speak with a vidcast commentator.

“The people have spoken – _all_ of the people,” he says, staring into the camera. “And Gallifrey has a Supreme Leader who will fight for what’s in everyone’s best interest. This is an historic reelection.”

“Yes, Narvin, it is,” Leela murmurs to herself. “It truly is.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Cliff's Notes for canon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/36608517), if you want it.

** Set during “Gallifrey 6.2: Renaissance,” shortly after Leela and Narvin come out of chronic hysteresis **

 

“You are not sleeping.” Leela cracks an eye open, even though she doesn’t need visual confirmation of Romana’s restlessness. The mattress roils like a sea at high tide every time the Time Lord flips over or kicks off another blanket.

Curled onto her side, her body a mirror image of Leela’s on the bed, Romana sighs deeply. “You aren’t either.”

“I just spent a great deal of time in chronic hist – history –”

“Hysteresis,” Romana supplies.

“Yes, that. I feel quite rested. I came to your room because it is plain on your face, how exhausted you are. The shadows under your eyes are darker than the night sky.”

Romana reaches for Leela’s hand. “I’m sorry. I know. I can’t figure out how to stop thinking about three dozen different ways to configure the transduction buffers, and which containment layout will strain the Eye of Harmony least.”

Leela squeezes her fingers, and Romana scoots closer. With practiced familiarity, she rests her head on Leela’s shoulder, and Leela puts her arms around the other woman.

“Even if I can’t sleep, I’m glad you came,” Romana says.

“I have missed you very much.”

“And I, you.”

They stay still for a while, partaking in this ritual of sharing space, a ritual they started after Andred disappeared and Pandora began haunting Romana’s mind. Back then, Romana had given Leela her own private quarters in the Presidential Palace, as was befitting the president’s personal bodyguard. As both of them struggled with their own kind of alienation and grief, they found refuge in the habit of resting together. The majority of nights they kept to their own rooms, but after the most difficult days they inevitably sought each other out. Sometimes they talked, but often they simply enjoyed the comfort of silent companionship. It was a trust and familiarity that Leela knew Romana did not extend to many others, if anyone at all, and she appreciated it for the extraordinary gesture it was.

On this particular day, Romana is practically vibrating with the force of her restlessness. Resigned, Leela says, “Go. Go and fix your Eye of Harmony.”

Romana sits up. “I can’t leave Tre to finish the realignment herself. It’s a twenty-person job on a good day, and Tre isn’t really up to it, anyway.”

Leela’s mouth quirks into a half smile. “But Tre is you.”

“Please don’t remind me.” Romana climbs off the bed and pulls on her shoes. “You can stay, if you’d like.”

Leela sits cross-legged on the edge of the mattress. “I will come and help you and Tre with the Eye.”

“I appreciate it, Leela, I really do,” Romana replies, running her hands through her long blond hair and twisting it up into a bun. She straightens out her jumpsuit, a one-piece thing made for the technicians who maintain the Citadel’s massive mechanical underpinnings. Somehow Romana makes it look elegant. “But not now. If you really want to help, you could get rid of the tafelshrews that have been nesting in the delta condensers of the transduction barriers, so they won’t chew through the power cables.”

“You want me to hunt rodents?” Leela snorts, rolling her eyes.

“Well, I also I have a meeting with the Yevnon delegation in sixteen spans, you could join me for that instead,” Romana says.  

“Very good. I will be there,” Leela says.

Romana steps forward and seizes her hand, squeezing it again. “I’ve missed you, Leela. I shouldn’t have left you in chronic hysteresis for so long. I shouldn’t have listened to Tre’s advice in that.”

“If you ever listened to anyone’s advice, I could only imagine it being your own. But I am glad to be here now.”

“I’ll see you later,” Romana says, and she leaves.

Boots dangling in one hand, Leela strolls the short distance down the corridor to her own quarters, the ones Romana specially prepared for her by stuffing them full of rough-hewn furniture draped in artificial furs. She stands in the open door, considering the prospect of tafelshrews, and decides that she’d rather take a stab at interior décor than rodents.

She has shoved two chairs into the corridor when the door across the way slides open, and Narvin steps out.

“You claimed your quarters, I see,” Leela calls as he skirts around the pile of discarded furniture to come see her. He’s found one of his CIA tabards, and the look suits him much more than the overwrought heliotrope robes he wore as High Chancellor on the last Gallifrey. Clad in black and white from head to toe, he moves like a happy batsnake that has freshly shed its skin. Leela has seen him and Romana only infrequently over the last few years, far more often on vidcasts than in person. While Romana carried the robes and collar of her presidential office with her usual aplomb, Narvin always radiated the sense of merely tolerating his Chancellor’s getup, like a sulking teenager forced into formal dress for a family dinner.

“Romana said this corridor had been prepared for us and I could choose any I wanted,” he says, stopping at her threshold to survey the room. His eyebrows lift. “Oh … goodness. The décor in my room is much more restrained.”

Leela pauses and puts her hands on her hips, surveying with him. She finally says, “Romana did _try_.”

“Tried to recreate the inside of a Shobogan mental asylum?” he murmurs, and Leela laughs. “Here, let me help you with that.” He comes over and picks up the opposite side of the horn-rimmed table she’s been scooting along the floor, and together they wrestle it out the door.

“Perhaps you need more furniture for your quarters?” she says as they fill up the increasingly narrow corridor. “I have plenty to spare.”

Narvin stares at her, deadpan, and says, “We’ll shove it all in one of the unclaimed rooms.” He helps her remove every stick of furniture, and they spend a while arranging and rearranging the rugs and furs and pillows on the otherwise empty floor, until Leela is satisfied with the way it feels.

“You’ve made it identical to the Axis, save for a fireplace,” he says, and the moment of silence that settles between them would be uncomfortable, if so much time had not passed since he visited her in that place. He’s been very vocal with Romana and Tre today, not bothering to hide his disapproval of the precarious situation they’ve created, layering timelines on top of each other like cake. But he’s been less expressive toward Leela – not avoiding her, exactly, but strangely subdued.

Over the last few years, Leela has keenly felt Romana’s absence. She walked into the Allora incident having steeled herself against any lingering feelings of friendship toward Romana in particular, because it would weaken her bargaining position. Of course, it was only a matter of days before all of Leela’s hard-heartedness began crumbling like the sandcastle it was. She has always been predisposed toward forgiveness where Romana is concerned, no matter which version of Gallifrey they find themselves on.

Narvin has been a different issue altogether. She decided she was well rid of him during her first few months in Mancipia. Her hands were full, keeping the Outsiders alive during the cold weather and building a community that could fend for itself, especially in the midst of so many predatory ex-slaveowners who were keen to take advantage of their weakness. At no point did Leela steel herself for anything in regards to him, because she hadn’t thought it necessary. Before they fought Pandora together, she’d loathed and disregarded him for years; no matter what passed between them on the Axis, once they settled on that not-quite Gallifrey she’d easily fallen back into those feelings, or so she’d thought.

The softening of her heart toward Narvin happened more gradually than it did toward Romana. During their time in that other reality, he showed her his own kind of consideration, clueless and clumsy in the most Time Lord manner possible. He ran after her on the transport pad after the incident with Allora, and shocked her with his kind words; afterward he kept an eye on her out of concern for her well-being the only way a dyed-in-the-wool CIA Coordinator could think to, by recruiting spies. When shipments of food and medical aid periodically arrived from the Capitol, sent at Romana’s behest, Leela’s people discovered data buried in the procurement logs that showed Narvin had doubled each order. The data was never meant to be found, but Leela recognized his handiwork when she saw it. When he came to Mancipia to negotiate for Lord Zachar’s freedom, wearing his overwrought purple robes and ready to speak with her as one leader to another, she felt pleasure at seeing him and hearing his voice. His earnest pleas, begging her to return to the Capitol with him, charmed her. The pleasure was short-lived, of course, because Narvin cannot seem to help but overstep himself, but the spark of it warmed her in a way she did not expect.

Later, when he admitted his fault in sending troops for Lord Zachar, Leela discovered that she was predisposed to forgive him in precisely the same way she has always been predisposed to forgive Romana. During the course of their separation over these many years, it has dawned on her that she doesn’t mind at all the shape of Narvin’s face, and his grey-blue eyes, and his steady hands. She has realized how much she appreciates the ease of his quiet company; and at the same time how she delights in arguing with him for the sheer joy of drawing out his dry sarcasm and the throbbing vein on his temple. More than anything, she savors the soft aftermath when it becomes apparent just how deeply her words have struck him.

Leela had tried, down to her very marrow, to integrate fully with the Outsiders of Mancipia. She intended to spend the rest of her living days with them. They did not regenerate; they lived a normal life span, birth and love and death, and the rhythm of it felt like a certain kind of home. But no matter how many roots she nurtured, they never flourished. It was like living inside a childhood memory, a place she recalled fondly but had inevitably outgrown.

The only time her instincts feel settled, feel _right_ , is when she’s standing alongside Romana and Narvin. Even when she is angry with them, when they act out of Time Lord stupidity and pride and she has to clean up behind them, they are the only tribe where she belongs anymore. No one else understands where she has been and what she has been through; with them is the only place she has a future.

On their last day on that not-quite Gallifrey, when Narvin chose to stay with her and face the Daleks, she felt a wild exhilaration in his unexpected bravery and loyalty. She took his hand and they ran through the corridors of that other Capitol, and they fought and defeated the Dalek Controller together. Leela has often known Narvin to be devious, and sometimes impulsive, and always too smart for his own good; but she’d never imagined he had such lion’s hearts beating in his Time Lord chest. 

Facing that danger put them shoulder-to-shoulder, with their attention focused on an outside crisis. Here on the real Gallifrey, without any immediate threat to conquer and Romana so preoccupied with her future self and her city, Leela and Narvin are left with little to look at besides each other. A more subtle sense of exhilaration tickles at Leela's palms and the arches of her feet; not the wild Dalek-battling exhilaration, but a faint electric sensation nonetheless.

Here in her newly renovated quarters, he stands beside the window, hands clasped behind his back. She moves closer, to survey the scene outside. “There might not be a fireplace, but I am glad for the view.”

“It is spectacular.”

Their housing block is situated at one of the highest points of the highest towers of the Citadel, Solitude and Solace clearly visible through the protective dome. The first of two suns rises behind the mountains, casting the sky in luminous violet and orange. With its statues and empty buildings, Pandak Square sits a few blocks away, visible just down the street. The city’s maze of boulevards and parks spread out concentrically from this point, an immaculately structured jigsaw puzzle.

“Since Romana has already rounded up all the Dogma victims and put them into stasis, I could use your help preparing for the refugees we’re expecting to return from abroad,” Narvin says. “Border processing.”

Leela looks at him sideways. “You think I have nothing better to do today, than assist you?”

He gestures at the eerily unoccupied city below, with its silent streets and still skies. “If you have other, more pressing social matters to attend to, I obviously won’t dream of imposing.”

Pursing her lips, she faces him with her hands on her hips. “We will strike a bargain, Narvin. I will help you with your border processing, and in return you will help me with the task I have decided to do today.”

“And what’s that, exactly?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “Something you are perfectly capable of doing, but I shall not tell you what. I will spend four spans helping you with your border processing work, and then you will give me four spans of your time.”

“What on Gallifrey would ever entice me to take such a foolish blind deal?” he asks, both eyebrows lifted nearly to his hairline.

“If you have other, more willing assistants,” Leela says, imitating his gesture toward the abandoned citadel, “then please decline my offer.”

“You promise this won’t involve any sort of murder or” – his nose wrinkles – “gardening?”

“I make no promises. Take or leave the bargain,” Leela says with a shrug.

“All right, all right. Four spans.”

She grins. “Excellent.”

The CIA Coordinator’s office is packed with neon-colored modular furniture and garish draperies, reflecting the personality of whoever ran the agency after Narvin’s departure. The two of them arrange the room as much as they can to his satisfaction and then settle down on opposite sides of his large desk. He begins by giving her a data pad full of identification numbers and asking her to sort them into simple order.

She catches a glimpse of the extensive list of names and files hovering on the translucent projection above his pad and seizes it from his hand instead, scrolling through the information.

For most of Leela’s time on Gallifrey, learning the written language was something she had little time or inclination for. The multitude of TARDISes dotting the landscape and leaking bio-organic technology, automatically translating circular text into something more comprehensible to her eyes, made the task even less pressing. She has never been a prolific reader, nor pretended to any scholarly aspirations, but the Doctor spent some time acquainting her with the written word, enough so she could sound things out on her own when necessary.

Serving as the de-facto president of Mancipia had been a trial by fire. She still hasn’t any scholarly pretensions, but with no TARDISes on that planet, no time travel and no organic technology assisting her, she had been forced to learn enough reading and writing to govern effectively. She might not plan on composing an epic saga in Old High Gallifreyan, lauding the Trouser Press of Rassilon, but these sorts of bureaucratic documents are manageable enough.

“Oh,” she sighs in relief. “The Doctor is here, on your list of Renegades. Last known location in the Mutter’s Spiral.”

Astonishment at her ability to read flickers across Narvin’s face so briefly, Leela would have missed it if she hadn’t been paying attention. He says, “The Doctor is one of the more predictable of the bunch, almost always in the Mutter’s Spiral. He’s on the list along with the Rani, the Eleven, Neeloc, and the Corsair, and a host of others. With Romana putting out an open invitation, have to prepare for any or all of them to show up at our door, at some point.”

Plucking his data pad back from her and flicking a few keys, he sends a new file to her device; complex circular script populates the screen from top to bottom.

The two of them spend hours on opposite sides of the desk, collating and organizing data. The task is boring, but Leela does what she learned to do in Mancipia: she treats it as a hunt, devoting her attention to tracking down the correct information, placing it in the correct category, the same way she’d track a beast in the field and carry it back to camp, to be bled and gutted.

As soon as Narvin’s hours are up, she tosses the data pad onto the desk in front of him and bounces to her feet. “My turn.”

“We should eat first. Have you had anything at all, since we came out of chronic hysteresis? The transition is taxing to Gallifreyan biology, I can’t imagine what it’s done to your human” – his gaze flickers down her body – “situation.”

“You have brought a picnic?” Leela asks in surprise. Her delight collapses into disgust when he reaches into a cubby in his desk and produces a pill-box. “Ugh. I will not put that in my mouth – I had more than I ever wanted of those foul chemicals, when we were on the run from Pandora. I have eaten nothing but real food for the last few years in Mancipia, and my tongue has no taste for your Time Lord concoctions.”

Narvin pops one onto his tongue and swallows, as if to prove it isn’t poison, and holds out the box so the pills rattle like dry bones. “They’re efficient and far less messy than regular food. They’re a superior form of nourishment. Anyway, they’re all we have right now. You might not have noticed, but the food refractories aren’t working. There’s no one to plow the fields outside the dome, no markets to buy from, no intergalactic carriers coming in for trade. Mancipia is a whole reality away.”

Lips drawn back in disgust, Leela gingerly takes a pill and sniffs it. “It is just as disgusting as I remember.”

“You haven’t even eaten it yet.”

With a roll of her eyes, she crams it in her mouth. “Are you happy now, I have fed my fragile human body? Come, Narvin, and quit stalling. It is my turn.”

On the way out of the CIA tower, Leela stops by a weapons locker. It isn’t secured – one of a multitude of details that haven’t been seen to yet, in Romana and Tre’s ongoing reconstruction of the Citadel – and she hands Narvin a staser.

Alarm flashes across his face, even as he automatically checks the staser’s safety function and energy pack, his fingers sure and steady as he handles the weapon. He groans, “I only had two conditions: no murder and no gardening. I should’ve known it would be too much to ask.”

“What if I tell you we will be murdering plants, Narvin?” Leela retorts with an enigmatic smile, striding out of the room without taking a gun for herself, only her knife at her hip. He follows along with only the slightest hesitation.

During the entire journey to the lower levels of the Citadel, he pesters her for more information. She keeps her mouth shut, basking in his increasingly desperate sarcasm. They step off the lift and into the enormous room holding the transduction barriers. The walls and ceiling stretch beyond view, and the hum and heat of the space wash over them, along with a distinct smell of ozone and vortex.

“Tre and Romana have put these poor things in such a state,” Narvin says, surveying the enormous mechanical apparatus. Statues and decorative columns surround the technology like sentinels, observing from beyond time. “I assume we aren’t here to give the transduction barriers a tune-up?”

Leela pads into the room, drawing her knife and flipping it absently in her hand, surveying the nooks and crannies and dark corners. Narvin trails after her, mercifully silent for a moment. It becomes clear after a short time that the tafelshrews in this room have been allowed to run rampant for so long, they have lost the fear of predators. When she spots two lined up together, gnawing on a massive metal cable connecting two pieces of machinery, Leela flicks her knife at them. The blade spears both simultaneously, pinning them to the ground where they squeal and wiggle for a second before going limp.

“Oh, no, Leela,” Narvin groans from behind her. “Is this what you’re doing with your time? Pest control?”

“No, Narvin, this is what _we_ are doing with _our_ time,” she says. Retrieving her knife, she uses the edge of a mechanical strut to pull them off the blade, so their furry corpses drop to the floor. “You are squeamish about tafelshrew murder?”

He sighs, rubbing his forehead. “I have so much paperwork to take care of.”

“Do you really believe you will rebuild your city, or your civilization, with paperwork? No amount of writing will cure the Dogma victims sleeping in stasis, or meet the Time Lord refugees who may or may not come, or fill the vats of fungus that supply the food-making appliances, or fix this tafelshrew infestation that threatens Romana’s work with these machines. This task is small and unpleasant, one you would give away to anyone else, if you could. But it is a necessary way to help Romana, just like your border processing paperwork. And it’s far more entertaining,” Leela replies. “You are afraid to dirty your hands?”

“You think I spent so many years as Coordinator of the CIA, and I don’t know how to dirty my hands?”

She pauses at that. “Perhaps someday you will trust me enough to regale me with tales of how you’ve dirtied your hands with CIA business. But CIA affairs, and jumping onto a Dalek Controller’s back when I ask you to, is one thing. This kind of muck is obviously too much for your delicate Time Lord senses.”

“Really, Leela, you think you can goad me into killing tafelshrews?” He stares at her with his mouth in a flat line, staser tapping against his thigh.

She grins, tongue caught between her teeth. “Yes.”

“Before we proceed, it’s _vitally_ important that you realize I’m doing this because we made a deal and I gave you my word, and certainly _not_ because you’re goading me.” With only a brief glance into the dark around them, he lifts his staser and aims it down the length of a delta condenser. A bright beam of light and loud clang echo through the room, and when Leela’s vision clears she makes out four small, furry corpses on the ground. An army of rodents squeal and scurry at the disturbance, retreating to the shadows.

She laughs in delight, spinning her knife in her palm. “Your aim with a staser is better than I remembered! You are a marksman!”

“All I’m trying to tell you,” he says, “is that it would only take a day or so to reprogram the city’s maintenance drones to deal with this problem.”

She turns and walks deeper into the humming room. “Your maintenance drones are equipped to kill living things?”

He jogs to catch up with her. “No, not exactly.”

“If K-9 were here, he could help us. But for now, we shall see how many tafelshrews infest this place, and decide how many cats to catch in the city streets and bring down here to do our hunting for us. Such predators do not require maintenance or repair, they only need a fresh supply of food.” She gestures to the shadows scurrying around them. “Nature can take care of itself, even in this unnatural place.”

“Animal control,” he mumbles. “The eleventh worst job on Gallifrey.”

“Take heart, Narvin, at least no one has asked you to be High Chancellor again.”

“I have a feeling Romana will work her way around to that, eventually,” he says dryly.

After a short excursion into the room to get a feel for the size of the problem, the two of them end up sitting side by side against the pedestal of Calantha The First’s statue. Leela has wheedled away his box of nutrition pills and is flinging them into strategic corners of the room, as bait. Cross-legged, with the staser on the ground beside him, he watches her work.

“You are not entirely pleased to be home, I think.” She flicks a pill off of her thumb and it makes a spectacular arc, pinging off of a glowing condenser and bouncing neatly into a suspicious-looking pile of something that might or might not be a nest.

He picks up the staser, checking its full energy pack for the third time in as many microspans. “This is hardly what any of us expected.”

“What were you hoping for? Gallifrey free from the Dogma Virus, where you were welcomed back into the CIA, and Romana was president, and I was a bodyguard?”

“I didn’t expect magic, of course not,” he says, staring at his lap. A sliver of raw emotion dances around the edges of his words. “I don’t know what I expected. As we stepped through the Axis portal, I realized that I had been coveting the memory of this place for so long, I didn’t really know if I wanted to be here at all, or if it was just some fantasy I’d built up in my mind.”

Leela flicks another pill into the darkness. “I spent the last few years building a city, and a people, out of dirt and nothing. The slaves didn’t even have names, when we walked together out of the Citadel – they only knew themselves by their designated number, like pieces of machinery. But we weren’t afraid of work, and made a life worth living. I am glad to be back to our one true Gallifrey, but to be honest, I do not know if I have the fortitude to build another nation from dust.”

“Would you go back, if you could?” he asks.

“No. I belong here,” Leela replies without hesitation. “And you? Would you go back? Do you miss that Gallifrey and those Regenerators?”

“I had a spectacularly comfortable desk chair in my Chancellor’s office,” he replies, plucking a pill from the box in her hand and flinging it down the room. “I really do miss that chair.”

Leela laughs, patting his knee. He twitches like a startled animal, but doesn’t scoot away. “I am glad you are here, Narvin.”

He blinks, and a smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. “Then I suppose I am glad to be here, too.”

Before either one of them can say anything else, the nearby lift buzzes open and light comes pouring out, along with Tre. The Time Lady’s eyebrows rise she takes in the sight of them together – not in surprise, but in a sort of knowing archness that prickles Leela’s spine.

“My dears, here you two are! I’ve been looking for you for ages.” Her smile broadens. “But if you’re busy, or if I’m interrupting something, I can come back later.”

Narvin pops to his feet like a shot, hands folded in front of his robe. He’s the very image of decorum, the impression betrayed by the slight squeak to his voice as he answers, “Lady Tre! No, no that isn’t necessary.” His tone holds a precise amount of calculated deference, a distinctly different tone to the genuine deference he uses when speaking to Romana. “Leela and I were just seeing to some delta condenser maintenance. Weren’t we, Leela?”

Wary for reasons she can’t fully articulate, Leela takes Tre’s proffered hand and rises to her feet. Tre links one arm inside of Narvin’s, and the other with Leela’s.

Leela finds herself propelled toward the open lift by this new version of her friend, and the sensation is like being drawn along by an elegant, indomitable tugboat. “I have a job that requires both your help. Come along, we have so much to see to!”

 

~~~~~

 

Narvin stands at the window of his CIA office, staring down at Pandak Square. Well, not exactly staring at the Square itself, but staring at the figure jogging its perimeter, round and round without slowing or seeming to grow tired.

Leela’s been at it for at least two spans. Narvin hasn’t been watching for quite that long – he’s had plenty to shift through today, reinforcing security measures for the anomaly vaults, and the Matrix data archives, and a thousand other little details that need seeing to.

If Romana plans to rebuild their planet and their people mostly from a pool of Renegades, no amount of security will be adequate to keep every last one of those miscreants from sticking their noses into every nook and cranny of the Capitol, and getting their deviant fingers on all manner of reality-melting things they shouldn’t. Narvin fully expects to have a dozen city-leveling schemes and villainous paradoxes on his hands in the first few months, and that’s not even counting the foundational paradox that Romana and Tre have built this place on.

He ought to start sealing off the Catacombs beneath the city, to prevent anyone from setting up an evil lair down there. He ought to program a three thousand and thirty-third layer of encryption over the CIA’s archives, to prevent anyone from hacking into them and getting bad ideas. He definitely ought to create a pocket dimension and tuck the Oubliette of Eternity into it for safekeeping, because as soon as the first Renegades fly through the transduction barriers, they’ll be squabbling like time tots, in a breakneck race to see who can pitch the others headfirst into oblivion. Romana’s rebuilt Gallifrey is going to be nonstop cocktail parties full of awkward small talk, temporal catastrophe, and homicide.

Instead of dealing with any of those things, Narvin heads out of his office and into the CIA field assignment supply rooms. A few microspans later, he steps out of the building’s front door. When Leela trots by, she draws up short, her forehead wrinkling in consternation as she surveys him up and down.

“Oh, it’s only you,” she says, sounding disappointed.

“You were expecting Rassilon himself?” Narvin retorts, trying not to feel offended.

“Of course not.” She pauses, panting. “Well, perhaps. I had planned to run through the city for my exercise, but I felt someone watching me. I assumed it was the old man who has been spying on us, and I stayed in the square to draw him out.” The crease between her eyebrows deepens and she asks, “Do you think he could be Rassilon? Truly?”

“You’ve seen someone else in the city?” Narvin asks sharply, glancing at the windows of the buildings towering over them.

“Out of the corner of my eye, in the shadows,” Leela replies. “When I try to get close enough to seize and question him, he disappears.”

Narvin is certain that the transduction barriers haven’t been breached, but he knows her well enough at this point to believe that Leela has certainly seen something – possibly something he and Romana and Tre aren’t capable of seeing.

“You think he’s an intruder of some kind?” Even as he speaks, he's already making a mental list of security measures to re-check, and re-prioritizing the currently dormant city-wide surveillance protocols.

“I do not know. But I do not sense danger from him, only that he seems lost,” she replies. Still surveying the buildings around them, he absently clasps his hands behind his back. “What on Gallifrey are you wearing?”

She surveys him up and down again, taking in his heavy boots, black trousers, and tightly fitted black-and-white jacket. His spine straightens and he squares his shoulders, unconsciously puffing his chest a little. “These are CIA field fatigues.”

“I know _that_ , Narvin. But I am surprised to see you clad for battle,” she says, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. “We finally have an enemy to fight?”

“No, I just thought I should wear more practical work clothes, for whatever torment you have in store, after you’re done helping me with paperwork. I assume you’ll insist we catch cats, or sanitize toilets today?”

Her concerned expression fades into one of mild delight. “You think I ask you to help with these tasks to torment you?”

“You certainly see it as a side benefit.”

Leela’s delight blossoms into glee. “You are not as stupid as you seem, sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” he replies dryly, lifting one eyebrow. “We all have good days.”

“I already caught seven cats and gave them a new home with the tafelshrews. They are fat and happy by now. But there are many other things to do.”

“And are you finished with all the” – he waves a hand at her general condition – “perspiring you intend to do today?”

“I could run for many more spans yet. You should join me,” she replies, bouncing on her toes, her long red hair fluttering around her shoulders. The sight is somewhat distressing.

He clears his throat, momentarily turning his attention to the statue of Pandak across the square. “Really, why would one run when it isn’t necessary?”

“To prepare for the times when it is necessary,” she replies, still bouncing, her legs shifting back and forth. “Surely the Coordinator of the CIA recognizes the importance of planning, so he is not caught unawares. You may end up hunted, or called to hunt, at any moment.”

“Ah, but the sign of true intelligence is avoiding that situation entirely.”

“Is it really, Narvin? I suppose we all have good days,” she says, and her low laugh makes his toes curl in the tips of his boots. He’d swear her blue irises glint gold, just like they did after Magistrix Borusa changed her, on that Gallifrey of eternal night. “Go back to your office. I shall join you in a while.”

He spends the next span checking and re-checking security and surveillance, looking for temporal anomalies, reassuring himself that he, Leela, Romana and Tre are the only life signatures inside the Citadel. When Leela shows up, bathed and changed, she gives him several creative and surprisingly helpful suggestions for securing the Catacombs, and then they sort through paperwork. Narvin watches her from the corner of his eye – occasionally she paces around the room, softly sounding out words, and a few times she points at a particularly complex circular figure and asks him what it means. Sometimes she sits cross-legged in the chair across from him, and sometimes she sprawls on her stomach on the floor, knees bent and boots swaying in the air. He doesn’t understand how she can possibly be so restless after so much exertion in Pandak Square, but she does all the work he gives her without a word of complaint.

Afterward, she doesn’t lead him to weapons storage again. They stroll into the Citadel, walking down the middle of deserted streets, until they arrive at a vast, blocks-wide expanse of red grass and silver trees. Shrubs ring the perimeter, along with patches of what used to be carefully tended flowers and ornamental banks of blue moss surrounding a sculpted series of ponds and waterfalls. As it is, the whole park has begun to creep inexorably outward and upward, beyond its prescribed area inside this carefully structured city.

“Dammit, Leela,” Narvin mutters, not so softly that she can’t hear him.

She practically skips into the red grass and plucks a shovel and a mattock from where she stored them earlier, just for this occasion. “Tamandra Gardens,” she announces.

“I am well aware of where we are,” he says, crossing his arms. “Of all the tasks that need doing before anyone else arrives, trimming the hedges is last on the list.”

“Oh, we aren’t _only_ trimming the hedges,” Leela says, coming over to extend the mattock to him. “Let us begin, there is a lot of work to do.”

“I said very clearly, no gardening. I’m no Cerulean or horticultural engineer. I won’t – hey, hey! What are you –” In a quick, careful motion, she sidles around behind him and slips the pike end of the mattock through the utility belt of his field fatigues. Before he can extricate himself, she begins towing him into the park, so he’s forced to stumble backward along with her.

He sputters, arms flailing behind himself as he tries to seize hold of the mattock. “Leela! Stop! This is outrageous, you can’t honestly think that the universe has come to such a sorry state of affairs that I’ll stoop to touching pl-”

“You’ll keep your half of our deal, Narvin,” she interrupts, the flat top of the mattock pressing against his spine as she brings him to a halt in a grassy clearing. Lifting it from his belt, she frees him. He whirls around, and before he can object any more, she shoves the tool into his hands. For a full nanospan he considers flinging it to the ground and stalking away; this situation is beyond the pale – he might tolerate being manhandled, but he absolutely cannot stomach the idea of _ornamental_ _landscaping_ when there are literally thousands of other, more important jobs to be done in his fragile, patchwork city.

It was inevitable that Leela would find a project designed to provoke him. After all, this is the nature of the unspoken game they’ve devised over the last week. Each day he’s saved his most mundane – but essential – filing jobs just for her. And fair’s fair, he provided her with a short list of his own dislikes when they made this deal. But the sheer lack of imagination, the utter frivolity of this particular task … he expected better of her.

“I know of your tribes – Prydonian, Arcalian, Cerulean and the rest. About how you are separated into groups that determine your life’s course.” She drives her shovel into the ground with  one foot, scooping out a chunk of dirt and tossing it to the side. “Your tribe is above this kind of menial work?”

“That isn’t always – it isn’t exactly – how the Chapters work,” Narvin replies, teeth grinding.

“On my planet, our tribes were also divided into groups, set apart for different purposes and taught to look down on each other.” Another shove with her foot, another clump of dirt cast to the side. He knows all of this, of course; the CIA has collected petabytes of data about Leela’s life, because the moment Commander Andred of the Chancellery Guard chose to take an alien wife, every square millimeter of her existence was analyzed and documented, for the sake of Gallifrey’s security. The CIA had a team of agents on the project for years. It also had something to do with the Time Lords’ need to control and predict the uncontrollable and unpredictable, but that was neither here nor there. Leela continues, “More often than not, this system made us weak. It kept us from seeing our true enemy, and overcoming him. We wasted much time, living like this.”

With a heavy thump, Narvin drops his mattock into the overgrown red grass. Leela glances at him from the corner of her eye, shoulders tensing, but she keeps shoveling.

“I tell you this, Narvin: I will not spend the rest of my life eating food pills. I am not a farmer, I am a warrior and a hunter. But I learned much from the Mancipian people, and those who had been slaves on the Regenerators’ plantations. This empty city does not need a decorative garden, but it does need grains and fruits and vegetables. In this space we will plant them, and tend them, and feed the Time Lords who return to this planet.”

Ah.

Perhaps not so frivolous, then.

He closes his eyes, pulling in a long breath through his nose. Indignation still churns in his chest, his fingertips tingling with the force of it. Indignation at himself for not being able to control these feelings. This is _beneath_ him. He is perfectly aware that at a certain level, he ought to ignore her petty provocations. At an even more fundamental level, he ought to be above her moralizing, and her persistent efforts to erode his understanding of what’s right and necessary. More than anything, whether he made a deal with her or not, he ought to be able to walk away and not give a second thought to what her human brain might think of him for doing so. He’s a Time Lord, after all. His people were bending time and reality to their will eons before her people oozed out of an ocean.

What he ought to do, and what he can do, are very different things in these strange, new days on this strange, new Gallifrey.

Still wrestling with his irritation, too much so to trust himself to speak, he pulls a pair of heavy black gloves from a pouch on his utility belt. He spins on his heel and stalks out of Tamandra Gardens without looking back. He hears, with crystal clarity, the sound of silence when Leela’s shovel stops its painfully small efforts, because she turns to watch him leave.

The sensation of pulling on his gloves proves an adequate distraction for the two blocks it takes to reach the horticultural engineering supply depot. He remembers where it is, of course, because he’s lived hundreds of years in the Capitol, and he’s spent most of that time as a spook, and his job is to know everything, including the location of infrastructure and supply storehouses. His understanding of what a tractor might look like is far sketchier than his understanding of where to find them, and stares in perplexity at the selection of machines available. Finally making an educated guess, he climbs into the seat and spends exactly three millispans hacking the control mechanism. The thing rumbles to life, lifting into the air with only a minor amount of bobbling, and he steers it out of the vehicle bay and into the deserted street.

The look of unadulterated delight on Leela’s face when he roars back into the garden with the tractor is a more fundamentally rewarding experience than stepping back into his native Gallifrey from the Axis. He touches a button on the control screen, and the machine idles to silence in front of her, hovering on gentle antigravity waves.

“You should probably get out of the way.”

Beaming, Leela puts her dirt-encrusted shovel over her shoulder, and collects his discarded mattock, and steps into a nearby copse of trees. Narvin feels slightly less impressive when he has to fiddle with the controls for several microspans before he finds the trigger for the laser tillers.

He doesn’t plant crops with her, of course. His four hours are up and, well, there are limits. But a third of Tamandra Garden is arable land by the time he climbs off of the tractor. Afterward Leela strolls with him along the bubbling moss-banked creek, and they sit together beside one of the waterfalls. When he returns to his offices in the CIA tower, there’s a negligible amount of sweat – and no chlorophyll whatsoever – on his black field-issue gloves.

 

~~~~~~

 

** Set at the end of “Gallifrey 6.2: Renaissance,” during Romana’s trial  **

 

Years ago, before Gallifrey fell to the Dogma Virus, Narvin stood beside Leela at a ceremony in the Panopticon where Darkel, Matthias, and Romana formally announced their candidacy for president. He told her that day, in no uncertain terms, how much he despised his people’s love of showing off – the unnecessary pageantry of their public rituals, the minutiae of which had not changed in millennia.

She had been delighted at their agreement over the issue, and surprised at his candor. Later, it occurred to her that he spoke so freely because he did not see her as a threat. Gallifreyan politics being what they are, other Time Lords would have used his words as weapons against him; Leela had no authority over him, and no designs on his position or power, and so she became privy to his true thoughts in a way few others probably ever had.

That wasn’t the last time Narvin conversed freely with her in a way he never would with one of his own people, because she was human, but it was the first. The striking novelty of that moment has lodged in her mind with such clarity that she can recall every detail, even though she was blind at the time, down to the wry tone of his voice as he commented on each candidate as they sallied forth, wreathed in robes and speeches.

Today’s ceremony is not an election; it’s a trial. The entire population of Gallifrey has gathered in the gallery of the courtroom – twelve people in all – to watch Romana’s impeachment and exile, and Tre’s subsequent assumption of the Presidency.

This time, instead of standing beside Leela and sharing in her disdain for this farce of a ceremony, Narvin leads the charade. He presides over the courtroom, submitting evidence of Romana’s faults into the public record of the Matrix, soliciting her guilty plea, and pronouncing judgment. When Romana refuses to present evidence or speak in her own defense, Narvin doesn’t even object! He permits it, moving along as if everything is in proper order!

Leela understands well enough the idea of negligence, and how such behavior might cross moral boundaries into the realm of the criminal. But Romana’s mistake with the transduction barriers and the Unvossi diplomat’s death was just that: a mistake, and not a moral failing.

Leela refuses to stand in the gallery with the Time Lords, because doing so would mean acknowledging the legitimacy of what’s happening. Instead, she keeps to the deep shadows of a remote viewing box, arms crossed and fury growing with each pompous, empty word that passes Narvin’s lips. He speaks of acting on behalf of the High Council, when there is no such thing left on this ruined world. He spouts laws and regulations like they are religious rites, clinging to them with the same blind loyalty as any zealot would a cult.

A cult with very silly robes and even sillier hats. But still, it is what it is.

He thumps his large metal staff on the ground, signaling the end of the trial and the finality of judgment against Romana: permanent exile. Romana leaves the proceedings without an escort, because the chancellery guard doesn’t exist anymore.

Narvin calls a short recess, to give himself time to prepare for handing the Presidency, the artifacts of Rassilon, and Gallifrey itself, over to Tre. As stealthily as a cat stalking prey, Leela leaves the courtroom and takes up position in the corridor just outside, concealing herself behind a statue to wait.

She won’t stay on this planet without Romana, of course. There’s no question, because Narvin's loyalty might be to Gallifrey, but Leela's loyalty is to her friend, and Tre is not that woman. Technically they might be the same person, but given the choice between them, Leela will always choose Romana. But if this is the last day she is to ever see Narvin again, she has decided she will at least speak to him one last time.

She watches as the small clump of Time Lord refugees who have returned home leave the courtroom, murmuring amongst themselves. Tre and Narvin emerge next, their heads together as they talk and scheme about her inauguration.

The rage in Leela’s heart as she watches them both could power the whole of the Citadel for centuries.

Tre pats Narvin’s arm, like she might pat a lap dog, and leaves. Narvin is finally alone, and he stands still for a moment too long beside the door. Without anyone else around, an expression of mild regret washes over his face. This doesn’t daunt Leela in the slightest as she stalks out from her hiding place. At the sight of her, his face contorts with even more misery. She meets his gaze without flinching and marches into the empty courtroom. After a reluctant moment, he follows, and the large metal door buzzes shut behind them.

She stops just inside, and he walks past her into the room. Arms crossed, she stares up at his wretched face.

“Leela,” he says, a plea masked under a thin layer of exasperation, the tone he uses when he’s trying to hide his feelings. The effort is clumsy, and pathetic.

“Traitor,” she hisses.

He straightens his spine and clasps his hands in front of his robes, finally managing to shutter his misery beneath a mask of professional detachment. “Is that the one we’re going with? I was expecting ‘coward,’ but I don’t mind a little variety.”

“Coward too, then,” she says.

He lifts an eyebrow, giving her his most practiced sardonic expression. “And now that’s out of your system, are you finished?”

In all of her years of knowing him, Leela has never wanted to punch him more than she does in this moment. She wants to take him to the ground and bloody his intolerably smug face, until he begins to grasp what a profound disappointment he is to her, but instead she pins her fists firmly under her crossed arms. “I am leaving Gallifrey with Romana, and since no one else on this cursed red rock will tell you to your face what a spineless weasel you are, I thought you should hear it from me once more before I go. And yes, now I am finished.”

She turns to leave, and he makes a small noise before saying to her back, “Leela, I didn’t have a choice.” 

Her feet stop moving, but she doesn’t face him again. “That is exactly what a coward would say.”

“I don’t expect you to understand. But it wasn’t just about whether Romana meant to kill anyone. It’s about whether Gallifrey maintains credibility with our allies, and the balance of – ”

“I understand your political reasons. I also understand your slave-like devotion to Gallifrey’s laws. Neither of these things justify what you’ve done to Romana,” Leela interrupts.

“They’re the same person.” She hears him shift from one foot to another, or perhaps he takes a step toward her. “And right now – given the state of the universe – Gallifrey needs the strongest version of Romana. Even your Romana knows it; she’s leaving willingly, she didn’t present any defense because she’s doing what’s best for everyone.”

“This _isn’t_ what’s best for Romana. Gallifrey is everything to her – no matter which face she wears, but especially the face we both know better than any other.” Leela finally turns around, and it takes him an instant longer than it should to hide his desperation. Or maybe he let her see it, to soften her feelings, so that she’ll forgive him before she goes. “I see Tre’s cleverness, and do not doubt it will serve this planet well. I also see her manipulations, and know that my friend would never do such things to the people she cared about – to _me_ – before her regeneration. You are wrong, to see Tre’s exploitation as strength. But Romana isn’t just my Romana. She’s _our_ Romana. How could you do this to her?”

He closes his eyes and scrubs a hand across his forehead, inhaling deeply. “I know that when Andred regenerated, he changed more than anyone could have expected. It isn’t always like that. Tre isn’t Torvald –”

Red and black specks dance across Leela’s vision, and she can’t keep her fists pinned any longer. She closes the distance between them, seizing the front of his robes with such force that he loses his balance and almost ends up on the floor, except for the fact that she holds him upright. The breath leaves him in a shocked rush, and he trembles as he finds his feet.

She stares up at him in unvarnished rage, her words dangerously soft: “Stop speaking, Time Lord, before I tear out your tongue. Do not use my dead husband in justifying your choice today.”

The expression that dawns on Narvin’s face is a tapestry of fear – fear that Leela might actually assault him, fear that he spoke so thoroughly out of turn that he deserves it, fear that his last words to her would be something so untoward.

“I know that I am not like your people, with my one small life. When it comes to that, you and I are the same now.” He swallows, and her grip on his tabard tightens as she presses on, “I know, too, that what happened to Andred was unnatural. But if you believe that my feelings about Romana now are based in what happened then, then you are a fool.”

She sees it in his eyes: he believes exactly that. The fear on his face has softened into sadness, and sympathy. He whispers, “I’m sorry.”

His arms hang beside his body as she holds onto his chest. For a searing moment, the only thing in the universe she wants is for him to wrap her into an embrace, because the gesture might just dismantle the grief underpinning her anger. She doesn’t want to carry these feelings anymore. She wants to release them into his unflappable hands, to let him hold them and hold her at the same time.

Narvin’s arms don’t move.

“I’ve done what I had to do, Leela,” he says, the words vibrating beneath her palms as he speaks. “I understand if leaving is what you have to do.”

Dropping her eyes from his face, she steps away without betraying the wobble in her knees. His eyebrows are drawn together, a deep crease between them. His lips stay open a fraction, as if he might say something else, but he does not.

With a frown and a nod, her breath tight in her lungs, Leela says, “Goodbye, Narvin.” He doesn’t reply, and the enormous courtroom door buzzes closed between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [CIA field fatigues](http://laurelhach.tumblr.com/post/170820312592/youd-love-that-huh-narv-doesnt-deserve-it-but) because yessss. Sorry I didn't fit the bloody face in during this chapter, but that's definitely something I'm very, _very_ interested in tbh. 
> 
> Also I have to believe Neeloc is a Renegade at this point. I don't want to contemplate the other possibilities. He stole a TARDIS and left for sure, right? Let's just all agree that he isn't a Dogma victim. Ok good, glad that's sorted out.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Cliff's Notes for canon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/36608517), if you want them.

**Set just before "Gallifrey 6: Enemy Lines"**

 

When life in the Capitol settles into a predictable rhythm, Narvin sometimes lulls himself into believing that Leela is domesticated, that she’s _safe_. There are always small reminders that she isn’t – her clothes, of course; her occasionally shocking eating habits; the fact that she freely visits Low Town and the Outsiders; her general habit of flouting Time Lord proprieties. Inevitably, he grows desensitized these little behaviors.

Truth be told, as time passes he finds some of them endearing.

Every now and then she presents a reminder that she is very much _not_ safe, and the notion that so many years on Gallifrey might eventually turn her into a Time Lord is a foolish one.

On the first day of diplomatic negotiations with the Monan Host, in an effort to resolve the standoff over the Host’s illegal quantum mining on Tarafallax, she stands in her usual place behind Romana’s chair at the conference table. When Mal’kino walks in with V’rell as his aide, she grows utterly still, save for her eyes as she tracks the two Monans across the room.

V’rell was, of course, the Monan responsible for a terrorist attack at Liaison Officer Hossak’s farce of a peace conference so many years ago, where Leela was in disguise as an exotic dancer and Narvin was, to his shock, also apparently in disguise as a diplomat. More precisely, V’rell was responsible for a terrorist attack in an alternative timeline that was overwritten, one that Narvin doesn’t have any specific memory of. He read Romana’s reports and basked in the public credit she offered him for preventing an intergalactic incident, but his recall of the events of that conference were distinctly lacking, temporally speaking.

Leela remembers, though. She skipped like a stone across the surface of several overwritten timelines during that incident, seeing and experiencing and recalling everything.

Just after it happened, Narvin had warned Romana that handing V’rell back over to his own people for justice would lead to a whitewash of a trial, and he’d been right. The Monan Host has always had cause to dislike Gallifrey, some of which might be justified, but parading out a criminal like V’rell as part of an official diplomatic delegation is not just a sign that the Monans aren’t taking these talks seriously, it’s a blatant provocation.

Narvin’s recall of the incident at Hossak’s peace conference might be hazy due to temporal overwriting and the intervening years, but Leela obviously has no such difficulties. Her attention fixates on V’rell the moment he walks through the door. During the course of the day, negotiations are periodically called to a halt to allow for the various species to find their own sort of nutrition, and stretch their appendages. In the first such moment, V’rell approaches Leela with a certain look in his eye that makes the nape of Narvin’s neck prickle. He doesn’t know what words the Monan says, but Leela’s jaw tightens and she walks away without any reply at all. At every subsequent opportunity during the day he approaches her, three times in all. Leela never speaks to him, but the room seems to grow dimmer in her general vicinity, as if a thundercloud has taken up residence over her head.

She tries to whisper something in Romana's ear several times, but the President is surrounded by Cardinals and dignitaries during each break, and she waves Leela away. Finally, Narvin heads off V’rell and peppers him with small talk about the tetchiness of certain models of temporal engines. Mal’kino speaks politely to Cardinal Tamadan for a while, and then takes his leave to shift over to Leela. Mal’kino’s mouth moves, and his lips curl into the Monan equivalent of a leer.

Leela’s face goes bright red with rage, and her hand goes to her knife. For a wild instant Narvin thinks she might actually draw it and kill the ambassador, but she only grips the handle, as if to reassure herself that it’s still there. “You had no right to do such a thing, and if you speak of it to me again I shall cut you from crotch to collarbone!”

The room instantly erupts in a riot of shouting, Monan military lunging forward to defend their ambassador and Romana’s chancellery guards drawing stasers. Quite sensibly, Romana orders her own guards to restrain Leela. Leela’s knife clatters to the floor, knocked from her belt in the scuffle as chancellery guards haul her bodily out of the room. She is so incensed that it takes two of them on each of her arms, her feet struggling for purchase as she growls promises of vengeance at the two Monan delegates.

The spectacle leaves Narvin’s stomach quivering and his joints soft in shock.

During the lingering tumult, he collects the knife from the floor and tucks it into the folds of his robe. Romana apologizes to the Monans, and eventually everyone sits at the table again, but the conference never recovers from Leela’s outburst. Within half a span the talks spiral into bickering and accusations, and no matter Romana’s efforts at reconciliation, the Monans accuse her of being unreasonable and storm out, intent on barricading themselves into their embassy on Pandak Square. Romana and Narvin spend the rest of the evening speaking with the Cardinals in attendance, fruitlessly trying to smooth whatever feathers they can.

This is, of course, exactly what the Monans hoped for from the beginning. Romana knows it, but Narvin says it aloud anyway as she stalks out of the conference room and back to her Presidential offices.

Romana has Leela brought in, and dismisses her guards so they can speak in private.

“How could you?” Romana demands, arms crossed and her petite frame a study in contained fury as she leans against the front of her desk instead of sitting behind it. Driven by his exceptionally strong sense of self-preservation, Narvin has ensconced himself in a high-backed chair in the corner. He expected Romana to dismiss him along with the guards, but her pique is high enough that she seems to have forgotten he’s here.

Leela paces back and forth in front of her friend. “He said such _things_ ,” she hisses.

Before she can elaborate on what “such things” might be, Romana says, “He wanted an excuse to blow up any efforts at resolve this issue diplomatically, and you gave it to him. You played right into his hands, and have exacerbated this entire situation in the bargain. The Monans will make hay of this for years to come. Was that worth it, for the sake of answering a personal insult?”

Leela comes to a stop in front of Romana, her face pink with rage and, possibly, embarrassment. “He did not insult me. He told me, in great detail, what happened to Baano after that other peace conference, so many years ago. He told me what _he did_ to Baano, and it was worse than what that fat-neck Flinkstab did to Lexi!”

What Flinkstab, the Nekkistani, did to another one of the exotic dancers at that conference? Narvin makes a mental note to review the Matrix records of the incident, because he hasn’t any recall of any such thing. Possibly another timeline that had been overwritten, but still.

“V’rell says that in order to earn his place with his people again, to wipe clean his criminal history, he hunted down all of the dancers, because they were witnesses. Baano and Lexi and Coralee and Yvette, all of them are dead! Mal’kino said I was the _missing piece_ in V’rell’s collection.”

Romana’s mouth has flattened into a thin line. “Narvin, verify V’rell’s claims. Have the report on my desk by morning.”

He shifts uncomfortably in his chair; his presence wasn’t completely forgotten, then. “Of course, Madam President.”

Romana uncrosses her arms and grasps the edges of the desk by her hips, her knuckles white. “Leela, you should not have responded to his provocations. Bring these accusations to me, let us investigate them properly and respond through diplomatic channels. But don’t draw a knife on a representative of a foreign government!”

“I did not draw my knife,” Leela retorts, affronted by the accusation. “V’rell murdered innocents for the sake of his own freedom, he said. Mal’kino set him to the task! Such men do not deserve respect or diplomacy, and what justice will they face from their own people, for these crimes? None! The death of those innocent women _was_ their form of justice!”

Romana speaks through her teeth, gripping the desk so tightly it’s a wonder it doesn’t splinter in her hands. “Whether he’s telling the truth or not, he used you to sabotage these talks. He gambled that if he offended you thoroughly enough, you would react with a public spectacle, and you delivered beautifully. You let him use you, and now Gallifrey will pay the price for your impulsiveness, because the Monan Host will not hesitate to use this against us as we try to resolve this Tarafallax situation.” Romana pushes upright from the desk and lifts her chin. “I am disappointed in you.”

Leela remains perfectly still, arms hanging by her side, fingers curled and claw-like, cheeks flushed and eyes blazing. “You expect me to apologize to these Monans.”

“As a start,” Romana says, each syllable heavy with growing weariness. “And I’ll have to give you some form of public discipline, as a show of contrition on Gallifrey’s behalf.”

“Discipline?” Leela echoes, her voice pitched high in outrage. “I am not the one who –”

“You’ll have to move out of the Presidential Palace, and you’ll be under house arrest for two weeks. I can’t have you appear in public with me, especially at affairs of state, for … I don’t even know how long.” Romana rubs her eyes, her shoulders slumping. She reaches behind herself for the comms button, to summon the Castellan.

“Move out of the Presidential Palace? _House arrest?_ ” Leela gasps, shock overriding her anger.

Narvin stands from his chair. “Madam President, remand Lady Leela into my custody. I’ll sort out her quarters this evening, and manage the guard detail for the duration of her house arrest.”

“Fine, Narvin. Take care of it.” She waves at him dismissively, her eyes on Leela. “I’ll expect you to be ready to present an apology to Mal’kino by the end of tomorrow.”

“I will not apologize.” Somehow, Leela’s already ramrod-straight posture stiffens. “You say I disappoint you, Romana? I say that you are a disappointment to me. It sickens me that you would speak gentle words to these men, these murderers – that you treat them as your equals and accord them respect that they certainly do not deserve.”

“Take her out of here,” Romana says, in a dangerously soft tone that instantly propels Narvin’s feet forward.

“Leela, please,” he murmurs, pausing beside her on his way toward the door. “Come with me?”

Leela finally breaks her attention from Romana and glances up at him with narrowed eyes. She turns and marches out; he has to lengthen his strides to keep pace. At a gesture of his hand, three chancellery guards fall into step with them as he escorts her from the capitol building.

He dismisses the guards once they reach a skimmer, and he keys in their destination. She watches his fingers, and then says, “Those are not the coordinates for the Presidential Palace. Is this new place to be my jail?”

“I thought we’d stop off somewhere else, first.” As the skimmer starts moving, he settles back into his seat. “If you don’t tell Romana, I won’t.”

“Ah,” she says, a quiet, surprised sound. Her hands tremble against her knees, and she balls them into fists to keep them still.

Narvin pretends not to notice. The quiver in his own stomach still lingers from earlier, now layered over with a different sort of dread. Romana and Leela argue occasionally, but what happened today was different. It feels more profound, something that won’t be forgotten, or glossed over, or fixed with an apology, to the Monans or the Cardinals or Romana herself.

Reaching into his robe, he hands over her knife. She leans away a fraction, studying him. “You think it wise to arm me again?”

“If you wanted me dead, you would’ve left me to bleed out in the Artron Forum years ago. And I think you’re much too intelligent to go hunting Monans tonight, anyway.” He pauses. “I trust you.”

With a _hmph_ , she slips the knife into its sheath and slouches back into her seat. “And what exactly are we doing, that Romana should not know about?”

“Something you’ll enjoy. If I’m trusting you, could you perhaps trust me for a span or two?”

Her hands have stopped trembling, the angry flush on her cheeks faded to a pale sort of resignation. She studies him and nods, then turns her attention to the skimmer windows as they pull into the vehicle bay of the CIA Tower.

Narvin leads her into the depths of the building, to the field weapons storage area, and the firing range. The late hour means that the facility is all but deserted, save for a single agent on duty at the monitoring station. Half asleep at the desk, she has a data pad in front of her. Narvin catches a glimpse of the text hovering above the glowing screen: _The Prydonian common room was full of noisy students, all cheering the outcome of the vortisaur race. Sigma was carried in on a sea of arms and shoulders, but he was brought down to earth soon enough by Luandra, who dragged him away from the back slaps of his Prydon peers. “Hero of the Academy, is it?” she tutted._

He clears his throat. She frantically jabs a finger, shutting off the screen, and snaps to her feet so quickly her desk chair topples over with a crash.

“Coordinator Narvin,” she says, aiming for respectful competence, and landing closer to high-pitched panic.

“Agent Parillym, you appear to have quite a bit of reading to catch up on,” he says. “Take the rest of your shift off, and I’ll keep an eye on things down here.”

She looks from Narvin to Leela and back again. “Yes … sir?”

“Was that a question, Agent?”

“No! No sir. Thank you, Coordinator.” She hesitates, seems to consider, and says with a bob of her head, “Lady Leela.” And with that, she snatches the data pad and scarpers.

“Why do you enjoy frightening them?” Leela asks as he takes her to the staser lockers.

He shrugs, opening the cabinet and pulling out two pistols. “The job has its perks, on occasion.”

After checking the safety is on, he hands her one of the weapons. One side of her mouth lifts in surprised delight. “First my knife, and now a staser? What sort of battle are we preparing for?”

“Some species find killing things to be cathartic, even if it’s only a facsimile.” He leads her into the firing range, a room bigger on the inside that stretches into darkness in all directions. Gentle illumination flickers overhead, following them as they move through the endless space. Narvin comes to a stop at one of a series of ornate gilded control pedestals set at regular intervals along the floor.

He presses a few keys, and a hologram shimmers into existence in the darkness. A blue-skinned soldier of the Monan Host, wearing full battle armor, drops into a combat crouch with his Monan weapon aimed at them.  

Leela allows Narvin to take hold of her wrist, lifting the staser to disable the safety. He holds onto her longer than is necessary, the contact firing up that jittery feeling in his stomach again, because this woman is dangerous, but the more weapons he piles into her arms, the safer he feels.

“You want me to shoot this false creature?” Leela asks, lifting both eyebrows.

“You handled a ranged weapon well enough, when we faced the Daleks. I thought you might enjoy more practice.”

She turns her attention to the artificial Monan. “He does not resemble V’rell.”

This takes him aback. He’d already come up with an auxiliary plan, involving block transfer computations, for a scenario in which Leela wanted to kill the Monan with her knife. He didn’t expect this particular objection. “I don’t have a data extract of his features, I can’t re-create him.”

“I don’t want to kill _any_ Monan, only V’rell,” she says. “I do not know this one, and whether he deserves death.”

He knows better than to argue with her that the hologram isn’t real; she understands that perfectly well, and her objection isn’t about that sort of technicality. With a touch of the gilded pedestal, the Monan flickers out of existence, and a simple four-dimensional target appears in its place. Leela can’t perceive the temporal element, of course, but the other three dimensions are perfectly suitable for her human senses.

“Better,” Leela says, lifting the pistol in the direction of the rotating oblong sphere consisting of concentric layers, all of them moving in different directions at different speeds. She stands square to the target, shoulders braced in a strange way, and pulls the trigger. The beam nicks the second outer ring, which spins faster in response, glittering bright crimson, and then settles back into its usual pattern.

Wrinkling her nose, she turns the pistol over in her hands and then stares at him. “You have given me a bad one.”

Narvin trades his staser for hers. He lifts it, aims, and pulls the trigger. The beam hits the dead center of the target and the sphere flashes silver, all the rings spinning wildly in response, before it settles down into standby again. His aim on the temporal target was off by a millispan, but he doesn’t tell Leela that. “It seems to be working just fine.”

She crosses her arms, eyes glinting mischievously. “You have made it easy for yourself, Narvin. You could not shoot it, if it was farther away.”

“You think so?” These little provocations used to irk him, long ago, but now they spark a pleasant warmth in his chest; she’s presenting him with opportunities to be impressive, to show off, all tied up in a neat little bow. He turns a dial, and the target moves into the infinite edges of the room, receding to a pinpoint no larger than his thumbnail. He lifts the staser again, pulls the trigger, and he hits it dead center. The target flares silver in the distance, like a beacon.

Leela takes up her odd stance again and fires right after him. From this vast distance, the beam blasts into the infinite darkness, widely missing the target. She shakes the pistol in frustration.

It occurs to him that she’s aiming well enough, but her stance is more suitable for firing a physical projectile, probably something like a crossbow. Bracing herself like this might work better with a larger gun like a staser rifle, but even then she’s preparing for a kickback that energy weapons never give.

Narvin presses a button to call the target back to a reasonable range. “You mentioned once that Andred showed you how to use a staser. I could help you with your firing stance, if you’d like.” He clears his throat. “I have owed you a debt for several years, after all, since you taught me how to defend myself with a knife on the Axis.”

She stares at the pistol, fingers tight around the grip. Of course she recognizes this offer for what it is: a distraction from this disaster of a day. “I would like that.”

He steps closer, extending a hand. “Let me show you the best way to hold it.” They spend several spans together on the firing range, Narvin taking his time moving her fingers into proper position, adjusting her legs and body in relation to the target, and working through the proper breathing patterns for pulling the trigger. Leela is, of course, a remarkably quick study. By the time they’re finished, he has shifted the target back a considerable distance, and she’s consistently hitting the bullseye.

Eventually, the next agent assigned to desk duty shows up, and they aren’t alone anymore. He returns the pistols to the storage lockers, and walks her to the building next door: the CIA housing block. On the top floor, he shows her to an unoccupied set of quarters.

“You can stay here, until things calm down and Romana allows you back into the Presidential Palace,” he says.

Leela walks through the large flat, frowning as she inspects the Rassilonate rococo-style furniture and gilded art on the walls. “This is my prison cell?”

“Hardly. It’s the housing unit for the Deputy Coordinator of the CIA. I haven’t had the time to appoint anyone to the position, since we returned home from the Axis, so it’s been sitting empty. It could be worse, for a prison cell.”

She comes to an abrupt halt and turns to face him, horror dawning on her face. “You expect me to join the CIA?”

“Merciful Rassilon, no!” he laughs, and her horror evaporates into relief. “But it’s a convenient place for you to stay, for a while.” He doesn’t mention the fact that the Coordinator’s flat – his flat – is next door.

Leela surveys the red velvet couch, picking up a few of the sparkly cushions and turning them over in her hands. She sniffs the fabric, and wrinkles her nose. “It would have been better if Romana had banished me to live with the Outsiders,” she mumbles.

“You don’t mean that,” he says.

Her frown deepens. “Perhaps I do not.”

He clears his throat, fairly certain that his next words will annoy her, but compelled to say them anyway. “No matter what V’rell or Mal’kino said, you aren’t the last piece in anyone’s collection. I can personally guarantee your safety in this building.”

“I am not afraid of those beasts,” she says, shoulders square and expression fierce.

“I know you aren’t,” he replies, not bothering to hide his admiration. He shifts from one foot to another, his palms cold, but doesn’t look away. “But if you don’t mind, it would make me - that is to say, I’d feel better, if you stayed here.”

Her expression softens. “I will stay then.”

“Romana ordered that you be put under guard. I’ll make sure it’s someone who won’t pester you. But you will have to remain inside these quarters for two weeks.” He gestures at the nearby study. “There is a balcony. So you can step outside when you want.”

“But not so I can climb down and escape,” she says.

“I’d rather you didn’t. We’re quite high up. And if you survived the descent, I’d have to hunt you down and bring you back.”

“As if you could do such a thing.” Her soft laugh comes out in a huff. Dropping the pillow, she says, “Will you escort me to the firing range and teach me more about stasers tomorrow?”

“I’ll do that,” he says with a smile, “if you’d like.”

Narvin sends a few agents to discreetly collect Leela’s belongings from the Presidential Palace, and sets a single guard outside her door. Over the next several days, he collects her each evening, and they spend long spans together in the firing range. He teaches her how to field-strip a weapon, and calibrate a staser rifle, and recharge power cells, and everything else she wants to know.

Leela never does issue that apology to the Monan ambassadors. She only makes it through nine days of house arrest before she knocks her guard unconscious, steals his staser, and sneaks out of the CIA housing block. She reaches the Citadel’s TARDIS bays without being detected, and stows away on Romana’s ship just before Romana leaves to deal with the crisis on the Monan ship, the Moros.

Narvin is left behind in the CIA ops control room, running Romana’s mission with a full situation monitoring team, when Romana cuts him off and sends her empty TARDIS back from the Moros, stranding herself on a self-destructing ship. A microspan later, Leela’s guard regains consciousness and calls in the report that she’s escaped. Narvin doesn’t even have to pull up the surveillance logs to know where Leela went, and what she’s done.

Somehow, in spite of the enraging fact that both women ran off in a fit of suicidal, _utterly idiotic_ bravery, he’s assembled a full team of armed agents in the TARDIS bay in less than five microspans, ready to launch a fleet of ships to the rescue.

Even as he divvies out last-minute assignments, the memory of his last catastrophic rescue attempt pings around his memory like a lead ball. Maybe it’s worth war with the Monans, too, if he can save Leela and Romana.

Before any agents have the chance to launch, the monitoring team radios from the control room with an update: “Coordinator! The Moros and the singularity have both vanished, just blinked right out of existence! No trace left of either one.”

“How did it happen?” he barks into the communicator, a greasy layer of fury roiling over the pit of anguish that stretches open below him, threatening to swallow him whole. After so many years – so many ordeals they’ve all been through – he’s lost _both_ of them at once.

He should have put a battalion of guards on Leela’s room. He should have locked Romana into her Presidential office the moment she insisted on going to the Moros herself. He should have moved faster, to get to his TARDIS and join them.

“I don’t know, sir! The readings are – well, they don’t make any sense!”

“I want an update on any traces of temporal anomalies or interventions in the area immediately,” he says, his entire body vibrating apart with the overwhelming need to do something, anything at all, to _fix this fucking disaster_. He pushes through the field team, toward his TARDIS. “Send the report to my ship. I’m going to –”

The sound of wheezing time engines fills the bay, and an unregistered capsule materializes a few paces in front of him. Narvin skids to a stop as the agents around him step back, dodging out of the way. When this new TARDIS door swings open, Leela and Romana stroll out as if nothing in the universe is wrong, at all.

And because existence is a nonstop nightmare carnival of improbability, Irving Braxiatel swaggers out right behind them, like a knight stepping down from a white horse.

 

~~~~~~

 

**Set just after "Gallifrey 6: Enemy Lines"**

 

Leela has never wanted to be a Time Lord. Living with these people, dealing with their cold intellectualism and largely self-inflicted drama, has only ever reinforced her faith in her own instinct. Gallifreyan politics are messy and burdensome; Leela’s instinct is incisive and unencumbered. She sees things clearly, and decisions become easy, when she follows her gut.

When she wakes up in the middle of the night, her heart throbbing in panic, her instinct is as clear as a bell. The dream that woke her up was not a dream, it was a truth – she doesn’t know how, but it is _real_. Reality at this moment, or perhaps a reality yet to come, a premonition warning of death and grief.

She’s on her feet and moving before her conscious brain considers any other option, jogging barefoot through the corridors of the CIA Tower’s housing block. Since Romana demoted Narvin and took over the Coordinator’s quarters next to Leela, he’s moved two floors below on the opposite side of the building. Given that he officially holds the title of Deputy Coordinator now, he might have tried to force Leela out, but he quietly opted for another flat instead.

It doesn’t occur to her that she forgot to put on proper clothes, and that she’s barefoot and in her sleep shift. Each step closer to his quarters, her legs move faster, until her jog turns into a full, desperate sprint. Her right hand grips her knife so hard her fingers go numb, even though there’s no one here to fight. At this late hour, anyone with sense is sleeping.

In the hallway to his room, her stomach roils as if she might sick up right here on the floor. She can't possibly brace herself for what she’s certain to find. A corpse, if her premonition is correct; his throat black with bruises, face twisted in terror and eyes unseeing, staring at the afterlife. True death, for a Time Lord with no regenerations left.

Leela has often said that death is nothing to fear, and it’s true that she does not fear it for herself. She’ll step willingly into what comes after, when her time is over. But often in her life she has been the one left behind when someone she cares about meets death, and she has keenly felt the pain of that loss. The graphic, potent vision of this particular loss – of losing Narvin – is the most painful thing she’s felt in more years than she can number. The sensation harkens to a time before the Axis, and the loss of another Time Lord who served as an anchor in her life, back then.

His quarters are locked, of course. Before she resorts to forcing the door, she repeatedly pushes the call button on the screen outside.

Just as she’s wedging her knife into the seam between screen and the wall, to pry it off and get at the circuitry inside, it opens all on its own. Narvin blinks drowsily at her, wearing only his white robe. He obviously pulled it on to answer the door, and he hasn’t even had time to fasten it properly. It hangs open halfway down his chest, and his tabard dangles over one arm, ready to be donned so he can deal with whatever work-related emergency has brought her to his door. “What is it? The Nekkistani delegation causing trouble in MidTown? Or that malfunction with the transduction barriers from yesterday? I told the techs they should –”

“Narvin!” Leela gasps. Tears of relief burn her eyes, but she forces them back. Her instinct had been certain beyond any shadow of doubt, more certain than anything she’s ever felt in her life, that she had come in search of his corpse.

He blinks again, his sleepy squint fading. He notices her red-rimmed eyes, her rumpled sleep shift, and her knife pointed vaguely in his direction. “Um. Yes?”

“You are not dead!” she cries in unfettered joy, flinging herself at him with open arms. Her instinct again, all logical sense overwhelmed by the sheer relief of finding him here, very much alive and very much himself, wittering on about work.

Narvin flinches away from her sudden lunge, and especially her large knife. In a tangle, the two flail backward into his dark quarters, and the door automatically buzzes shut behind them. Leela’s blade clatters to the floor as she wraps herself around his neck, hands fully occupied with holding him. She murmurs his name several more times, as if pleading for verification; she touches his head, his shoulders, his back, reassuring herself that he’s real, clutching him so thoroughly and so tightly that he squeaks.

His body is rigid at first, in shock from this unexpected onslaught. After a moment, his free hand reflexively flattens against her ribs, a soothing gesture. On her tiptoes, she rests fully against him, his chest rising and falling as they breathe in tandem, irrefutable proof that her instinct was wrong. He’s as living and perplexed as he could possibly be.

“What’s happening? Are you alright? Is it Romana?”

“You were dead,” she repeats, her face buried in his neck and words strangled by her relief.

“I wasn’t sleeping _that_ soundly.” She might expect that sort of retort to be dripping with sarcasm, tinged with condescension, but instead he sounds concerned. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

As they shuffle together in this embrace, her bare heel bumps against the handle of her knife, which reminds her of the other reason she came here. Cursing her own stupidity, she pushes away from him with a hiss and snatches the blade from the floor.

In her delight at finding Narvin alive, she neglected to search the flat for threats.

His eyebrows lift nearly to his hairline as she prowls his moderately sized quarters, stalking from one room to the next on bare feet. She patrols the living room, then the study, and steps into the small kitchen cubby and starts flinging open storage lockers, pulling nutrition packets and Promarzzi bars out to inspect the depths of each.

“Leela, are you having some kind of human medical problem?”

She pops out of the kitchen, waves the knife vaguely in his direction to dismiss his concern, and pads into his bedroom. She flips over the mattress, digs through the cabinet with his underthings and spare CIA robes, and searches the corners of his sonic shower.

“I’m going to call Romana,” he says from the living room.

She’s out of his bedroom like a shot, arms crossed as she takes up position near the front door. “There is no need, everything is secure. I got here before the old woman.”

“Old woman?” His eyebrows are still somewhere near the ceiling.

“She was a spirit of some kind. And she hunted and killed you through the corridors of the Capitol – I saw your corpse, where she had …” Leela swallows, gesturing vaguely at her own neck, the sight of Narvin’s mangled throat still distressingly fresh in her memory. “It was a vision, of the future or the present, I do not know.”

“Hunted by a spirit,” he echoes dubiously. She nods, fiddling with her knife as she leans her ear to the door and listens for anything unusual in the corridor outside. Her face burns hot with lingering distress, her stomach still churning with grief she shouldn’t be feeling. “Leela, it was a bad dream. A nightmare.”

She shakes her head, trying to figure out a way to explain to him in words his limited Time Lord senses might understand. “It was more than a dream. It was a yesterday that didn’t happen, or a tomorrow yet to come. It was real, as real as you and I are, here and now. I have lived among your tribe longer than any other, Narvin, and I know what is real and what is not. This is not a child’s nightmare, keeping her awake in the dark. This is a prophetic vision.”

He watches her, thoughtfully sucking at the inside of his cheek, and then steps to a screen embedded in the nearby wall. It flickers to life at his touch, and his hands dance across the controls, calling up dozens of classified surveillance updates from across the city, and status reports from various chancellery guard patrols.

“I don’t see any incident reports or anomaly sightings. Nothing in the last two weeks. The APC Net doesn’t have a record of anything like what you’ve seen. I thought perhaps you were describing a rogue Cloister Wraith, but there aren’t any reports from the Matrix Keepers about any such breaches,” he says. He’s taking her seriously enough to check, at least, which calms her nerves a fraction. “Could you tell what kind of … spirit … this woman was?”

Leela shakes her head. “All I know was that she lived for the hunt. What sort of hunt, I cannot be sure.”

Narvin nods, and goes to the small kitchen cubby. It’s just large enough to stand inside, and has a few empty storage lockers meant for fresh food. All he keeps are nutrition pills and bars. He jabs a button on the wall, and a panel slides open to reveal two mugs of steaming tea.

He takes one to her, and gestures at the nearby couch. “Join me for a moment?”

She presses her ear to the door one last time to make sure the corridor is empty, and then follows him to sit down.  

“I’m alive, as you see,” he says, tilting his head to study her face. She sniffs, scrubbing her cheek with the back of her free hand. “You’ve secured my quarters. There are no anomalies in the Citadel right now. Whoever this huntress is, she isn’t an immediate danger.”

“Yes, but I am certain I saw you dead,” she says, the thick lump in her throat swelling at the memory. “It felt as if a spine-backed prickleboar had chewed up and spit out my insides.”

“I’m pleased to know that this late hour hasn’t dampened your skill with poetic simile.” At her eyeroll, he buries his face in his mug for a long sip of tea. “Would you like me to send a warning to the chancellery guard, and put them on alert for a day or so?”

“Yes. Do that.”

Narvin stands up, returning to the screen on the wall. Leela watches him send the message, and she takes a drink. The warm liquid soothes the sour ball quivering in her throat.

“Was it a good death?” he asks after he’s done, still trying to make light, one side of his mouth quirking up a fraction.

“You were terrified,” Leela whispers bleakly.

He sighs. “That sounds like exactly what you’d expect from me.”

“I would not. This thing that took you, she was – she was not of this world. She was not of any world. She was a horrible, eternal thing.”

His fingers tighten around his mug. “Thank you for being concerned.” Leela wasn’t concerned; she was devastated. She almost tells him so, because he seems to have not understood her distress, but he continues, “Would you like me to walk you back to your room?”

“No,” she replies. “I am staying here.”

Narvin chokes on his drink, coughing as he fumbles to put it on a nearby table. “Beg pardon?”

“I will stand guard tonight. You may think me foolish, but I could no more go to sleep now than I could if I had such a vision about Romana. Would you rest, if she was in danger?”

“Well. You or Romana, no. I get your point.” He glances toward the door, at the knife in her hand. “You want to stay in my flat, while I sleep?”

“It is no different than our time fighting Pandora, taking turns standing watch during the night,” she replies.

“We aren’t at war anymore, Leela. The Citadel is safe. I have seen to the security measures for the CIA housing block, and specifically my quarters, as well as yours, and Romana’s, and even Ace’s. I’ve personally guaranteed our safety, and there’s no need to stand guard.”

“My instinct tells me otherwise,” she replies.

He sighs again. “There’s no point in arguing, is there?”

“What does your experience tell you?” she says, rising to her feet and moving toward the door. “Rest, Narvin. I will keep you safe.”

Bewildered and resigned, he puts away the mugs and shuffles into the bedroom. She begins patrolling his modest four-room quarters – much smaller than the Deputy Coordinator’s flat that Leela currently occupies, and miniscule compared to his previous Coordinator’s accommodations. He could have demanded a much more impressive suite of rooms; surely there are no shortage of CIA underlings ripe for displacement, so he could have a flat more befitting his station.

Narvin never does anything without good reason. As Leela pads through the living area and kitchen, then prowls through the petite study, she decides to ask him about this strange choice in the morning. Standing on the study balcony, she surveys the splendid view, watching the Citadel’s lights twinkle in the heart of night.

No matter how much she does to assure herself that the flat is secure, the certainty of Narvin’s death still prickles her spine and grief still gnaws at her gut. Her logical mind knows he isn't, which means that her instinct might be _wrong_ , and the implications of _that_ add an unsettling layer of distress to the emotions boiling through her like a pot left too long on a stove.

On her next pass through the main room, she finds him standing in the darkened bedroom doorway. He says, “How do you expect me to fall asleep when you’re flapping around my flat like a vortisaur?”

Leela has certainly not been flapping. She has been as silent and soft as a shadow.

His robe is still unfastened, the muscles across his chest taut with nerves. His gaze darts to the floor and he clears his throat. “You could. Ah. You could come in here. If it would stop you from making so much noise.”

Too skittish to wait for a reply, he turns and disappears into the dark bedroom.

After a moment, Leela follows, because the sight of him quells her worry. He has righted the cabinets and mattress that she left askew in her earlier search for danger, and he sits on the edge of the bed, waiting.

Both of them have enough sense, at least, to not waste time verbally dancing over who sleeps on the floor. She sits cross-legged on the corner of the mattress, facing outward, positioning herself between him and the doorway. He doesn’t even say anything about the knife still clutched in her hand. Stretching out on his back, he tucks one hand behind his pillow and pulls the blanket over himself.

Stillness falls over the apartment, save for the quiet sound of both their breathing.

Eventually, Leela shifts backward, further onto the bed. A while later, she does it again, her knife flat against the sheets. Twice more, at varying intervals of time, gradually drawing closer to him. He doesn’t move, but he certainly isn’t asleep.

Finally, when she’s within reach, his fingertips tentatively graze her elbow. The touch is an anchor, pulling her into the reality here and now, that Narvin isn’t dead and she isn’t seeing his corpse laid out for inspection. Her breath hitches in her chest, her knuckles white around the hilt of her knife. In response, his palm presses flat against the small of her back, fingers bending around the curve of her waist.

After everything else this evening, what use would there be in denying her instincts at this point? With careful, deliberate movements, she leans over to place the knife on the table beside the bed, within easy reach. Turning to look at him, she finds his eyes open wide in the darkness, his hand still resting lightly on her hip.

Without a word, she stretches her body alongside his and settles her head on his shoulder. He folds his arm around her and draws the blanket across them both.

“This is better,” she whispers. He smells of soap, and his skin is cool against her hot cheek.

“Yes,” he replies, hardly louder than his breath, as if even a whisper would shatter this moment.

Her worry, her fear, her grief, all of it recedes like the tide, leaving smooth sand behind. Nuzzling closer, she brings her ear to one of his hearts. Her arm stretches over his chest, palm resting against his second heart. The cadenced beat is a metronome, regulating her breathing.  

“You may sleep now,” she tells him.

He snores, but Leela decides she doesn’t mind.  

In the morning she wakes up alone, with red suns-light streaming through the window. This feeling is familiar, because Andred was often the same, his Time Lord physiology only requiring a fraction the amount of sleep she did. She hears Narvin in the next room, though, clacking away on data pads and very much not dead at the hands of a spirit, so she doesn’t have any particular urge to bound out of bed just yet. Face pressed into his pillow, she breathes in his scent and stretches languorously beneath his blankets.

When she finally rises, she pads barefoot into the living area, running her fingers through her mussed hair. He glances up at her, and his eyes snap down again to his work. He’s fully dressed in CIA robes, situated on his couch in between three different data pads. With inhuman speed, his hands flit across the various translucent APC Net screens hovering above the devices, processing whatever intergalactic intervention the CIA has on deck for today.

“I thought you’d gone into full hibernation, like a pig-bear in winter,” he says. “It’s a wonder humans ever figured out how to make fire, much less achieved hyperlight space travel, given how much of your collective lives you sleep away.”

Leaning over the back of the couch to poke a finger at one of his files, Leela cheerfully retorts, “It’s a wonder Time Lords are able to get out of bed anytime at all, given the weight of your fat heads.”

With a smirk, he gestures at the nearby dining table, which is so pristine it probably hasn’t ever been used before. “There’s food, if you’re hungry.”

A bowl of fresh fruit sits out, piled high with options of every shape and color Gallifrey has to offer. This certainly wasn’t here last night, not on the table and not hidden away in the apartment. Leela remembers quite clearly, because she inspected every last locker in his kitchen, and surveyed the rest of his quarters from top to bottom. He must’ve had the fruit delivered, or went out to fetch it himself, while she was sleeping.

Plucking a magenta-fruit from the top, she helps herself to some water from the food machine in his kitchen cubby, and then sits down at the table and crosses her legs, absently swinging her calf back and forth.

“You may borrow one of my robes, if you wish,” he says, still not looking up from his data pads.

She glances down at herself, at her very short sleep shift. The fabric is a wrinkled mess, since she spent a good portion of the night plastered against him. She’d been in such distress last night, she hadn’t even put on shoes before leaving her own quarters. Her clothes scarcely touch her thighs, and her bare shoulders peek out from beneath spaghetti straps and long red hair.

She looks back to Narvin, and his meticulously-apportioned attention, in an entirely new light.

After several more bites of magenta-fruit, Leela strolls into the bedroom and selects a spare white robe from the closet. Tailored for his much taller frame, it pools around her feet and wrists, and she feels particularly silly when she emerges into the living room. He finally lifts his attention from his work, however, so she doesn’t take it off again.

“Romana has sent me two separate summons in the last quarter span. There’s been a power shift on the Unvossi homeworld, and our ambassador is requesting intelligence and resources, to deal with the fallout. I have to go.” He stands up, glancing around the flat, and asks earnestly, “I assume things are safe this morning?”

“I don’t sense any danger,” she says. “I will leave you to your work.”

Before she can finish gathering up her long robe and turn toward the door, he stops her. “I’d rather you didn’t go that way.”

“You do not wish anyone to know I spent the night in your quarters?” she says, arching an eyebrow.

“Well. I mean, for everyone’s sake. I wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong impression about” – a helpless flap of his hand – “anything.”

“And what ‘wrong impression’ would that be?” Leela asks, because his discomfort is delightful, and she’d stand here tormenting him all day, if he’d let her. “Would it not give a worse impression, that someone might have seen me come in but never leave again?”

“I checked the corridor surveillance records to make sure no one else was up and about last night, when you came. I’ve scrubbed all the visual logs from those timestamps. I’m sure no one saw,” he replies, words spilling out faster and voice ratcheting up a half note into something closer to a squeak.

“You are ashamed?” she demands, arms crossed and fingers drumming on her biceps. This might have been sport at first, but now she feels a genuine spark of annoyance that he went to such lengths to cover up her visit. His cheeks have gone pink, and he backs up a step, eyes casting around the room as if looking for a transmat to escape, or a black hole to fall into.

“Of course not,” he sputters. “There isn’t anything to be – I mean it isn’t as if –”

“You are ashamed!” Leela knows that Narvin’s continued sputtering will only increase her annoyance, so before all her warm feelings about this morning are squandered, she presents him with an escape hatch: “You are ashamed of your weakness, that you required my protection last night!”

His eyes go almost perfectly round, his jaw hanging open for a full nanospan. “I … am?”

“And now you expect me to climb up the outside of the building like a spider, or magically fly back to my quarters, to hide your shame?” Leela uncrosses her arms with a sigh. “I thought you had grown past such cowardice, Narvin. If you will not let me leave by the door, what do you propose?”

“Ah. Well. This way,” he says, spinning around and practically dashing into his study. Next to a hideously enormous piece of tasteless Time Lord art, he touches several unremarkable spots on the blank wall. With a soft hiss, the art shifts to the side, revealing a hidden staircase and landing, dimly lit by sparse panels glowing in the ceiling.

Leela’s lingering annoyance evaporates in a revelation. “This is why you chose these quarters.”

“This flat was originally set aside for someone called the Intervention Specialist. They reported directly to the Coordinator, and would be assigned missions at all times of day or night, all of which required the utmost discretion and secrecy. It wasn’t exactly like the Lord Burner, but it wasn’t exactly ... unlike that.” He purses his lips. “The position was eliminated some time ago. I didn’t, however, eliminate the passages they used. Come along.”

Leela gathers her long robes, so they don’t drag the floor, and follows him into the stairwell. They climb the stairs, and take a few turns, but at odd angles that can't possibly correspond to the actual geometry of the building. They're some kind of magical Time Lord engineering, Leela decides, marking the path in her mind so she can follow it again, if she wishes. After a much shorter walk than the regular hallways between their quarters, Narvin brings her to a dead end with two nearly invisible door panels on opposite walls. He presses his fingers to the featureless space beside one, and it pops open to reveal her study.

She steps past Narvin into her flat, then turns to look back into the corridor and the other hidden door across the way.

“That one leads to the Coordinator’s quarters?” she asks.

He nods.

“It has been there all along, and you did not think to tell me?”

“I really must go.” He touches the wall, and the hidden panel closes.

Leela has plenty to do today, but she spends her spare time fiddling with the hidden panel in her study until she finds the sequence of invisible buttons to open the door.

When the suns have gone down and the building grows quiet, she returns to Narvin’s quarters by way of the Intervention Specialist’s secret passageways. Standing in the dim, narrow landing outside his study, she briefly tries pressing the blank wall in hopes of stumbling across the correct pattern, before giving up and knocking on the door panel.

After a long moment, it slides open.

Narvin stares at her, obviously surprised but not displeased. He hasn’t been home long, she surmises, given the fact that he has taken off his tabard but still wears his white robe.

She pushes past him into the study and begins the same sort of survey she conducted the night before, inspecting every nook and cranny for anything that triggers her instincts for mortal danger. He makes a few inarticulate noises, and then manages, “You’re here.”

“So many years in the CIA, and your powers of observation are sharper than a warrior’s spear,” she snarks. Without retorting, he follows her into the living area as she continues her search. She picks up another magenta-fruit from the bowl still on the table, munching it absently and peering into his storage lockers, poking through his lavatory, and inspecting under his bed. He watches for a while, and finally sits down on the couch with a data pad, pretending to be busy with something else instead. She can tell he’s pretending, because his eyes follow her more often than they look at the screen, and he never scrolls whatever he’s reading.

She eventually comes to sit at the opposite end of the couch.

He puts down the data pad. “You’re quite finished?”

“Nothing is amiss. I sense no danger here.”

“No premonitions of death tonight?”

“Not yet,” she replies. “But the evening is as young as a newly hatched kitten-shark, and just as blind. Darkness always holds danger of one kind or another.”

“Ah.” A contemplative pause. “You think it might be prudent to stay for a while?”

In answer, Leela pulls off her boots and crosses her legs, settling in on her end of the couch. Then she reaches for one of the spare data pads, flicking a few buttons and swiping toward the big screen on the wall. It flares to life, and the Public Register Video appears.

Narvin retrieves the data pad and goes back to reading while Leela watches the commentator, who finishes a story about recent upheaval in the High Council over several of President Livia’s new policies. Eventually, during an interview of one of the Cardinals, the topic shifts to the transfer of power itself.

“How can we trust Coordinator Romana to be truly impartial and effective in managing the Celestial Intervention Agency when she is so obviously compromised by the alien company she keeps?” the Cardinal says into the camera. “What further proof do we need, than the fact that the offworlder Leela not only attacked one of our fellow time-faring ambassadors, but she did it in public and in front of our own leadership? President Livia ought to take a firm hand in dealing with this situation, instead of allowing Romana so much latitude when she has previously shown such serious lapses in judgment in this particular area. Surely none of us can forget the catastrophe that occurred at the Academy, all of it sparked off by Romana’s weakness for non-Gallifreyans.”

Frowning, Narvin touches a symbol on the data pad, and the big screen goes dark.

“They fixate on things like a cur fixates on a bone,” Leela murmurs. “They will chew it until it splinters.”

“They’re just grasping at any leverage they can find. Romana’s popularity unsettles them. It always has,” he says. “It used to unsettle me plenty enough.”

“I do not like being chewed on,” she says, even more quietly.

Standing up, he clears his throat. “I should get some sleep.” He begins walking toward his bedroom, hesitates awkwardly with a half-glance back toward the couch, and then continues on.

She draws her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on them, and stares at the dark screen. Partially to give Narvin privacy, for whatever sort of personal hygiene he might see fit to do before bed. Mostly because of the ever-present feeling that no matter who she befriends on Gallifrey, no matter how much she integrates into the culture, she doesn’t belong here. Not on this planet, not in the Citadel, not in this CIA building, and not even in this flat.

When she first returned to this reality and helped cure the Dogma Virus, she was lauded as a hero alongside Romana and Narvin. But ever since the incident with the Monan Host, the daily vidcasts inevitably have something to say about her existence, and how her every breath is an affront to Time Lords in one way or another, and how she brings shame to those whose company she keeps. Sometimes Leela feels like it was easier in Mancipia, when she was an Outsider on that other Gallifrey. Those Regenerators never pretended to believe that she was their equal, they were upfront with their prejudice and disdain. In this reality, the Time Lords don’t have to regenerate to change faces; their hypocrisy does it for them.

The light from Narvin’s bedroom switches off, accompanied by the sound of dramatically ruffled blankets, and then silence.

Leela turns her attention to the window, late night darkness punctuated by skimmer lights whizzing through the domed sky. There should be an accompanying dull roar; she could hear it if she went out onto the balcony in the study, but the window glass is specially designed to keep noise out.

For the first time in the months since she stepped through the Axis portal into this, the one true Gallifrey, she aches to feel the wind on her skin and the unfiltered suns on her face. It has been far too long since she left the confines of the Citadel.

She closes her eyes and listens to Narvin’s soft, steady breathing in the next room. He isn’t asleep yet. He obviously wasn’t tired when he turned off the Public Register Video screen. He was trying to distract her.

She decides she would like to be distracted.

Pulling off her cowl, because it’s unnecessary in this perfectly temperature-controlled apartment, she wears only her tank top and trousers when she pads into the bedroom. His eyes follow as she puts her knife on the table and joins him on the bed. Lifting an arm, he makes room for her against his chest, just like before.

Leela falls asleep first this time, lulled by the sound of Narvin’s hearts-beat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen you guys, I have literally never written any sort of self-insert fic. This still ... probably doesn't count? Idk, but I'm just saying, if I was a very junior CIA Agent working the night shift on a deserted firing range, I'd 100% be reading some Academy-era Theta Sigma fic, written by the hand of my illustrious Lady President herself. I imagine the file of this fic is very difficult to come by, and maybe even illegal to look at on official CIA servers, on company time.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Cliff's Notes for canon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/36608517), if you want it.

**Set immediately after the last chapter, and just before “Gallifrey: Erasure”**

 

As he does every day, Narvin wakes up after exactly two-and-a-quarter spans of rest. The windows are dark, and Leela sleeps soundly next to him. He’s curled onto his side, with her head propped on his outstretched arm, her back tucked against his chest.

His neck aches, and his arm is numb. His hip tingles as if it’s gone completely flat from resting on the mattress too long in this position. The fact that he’s chosen to inflict this situation on himself for two nights in a row, sleeping with his body twisted like a pretzel around someone else, is a novelty for him, especially in this particular incarnation. After all, it isn’t as if he’s in the throes of his impulsive youth anymore.

Extracting himself from the bed would fix his discomfort, but instead he concentrates on redirecting his blood flow, until he can wiggle his fingers again, and his hip stops aching. The process takes longer than it should, his focus periodically breaking as Leela’s hair tickles his lips, and his every breath brings in a lungful of her warm, dizzying scent.

He has to use his respiratory bypass at a certain point, but once his circulation is sorted, he closes his eyes and shifts his head forward just far enough so the tip of his nose touches the back of her head. Soft and slow, he finally lets himself breathe again. No matter how much he wants to, he doesn’t lean forward any further, so his mouth finds her shoulder, or maybe her neck, or any skin at all. Leela twitches, whimpering at something in her dreams. Flattening his hand against her stomach, he makes a low humming noise, and she goes soft against him as she settles down again.

He parses out a fraction of his concentration to controlling his own biological reaction to being in this particular position, with this particular woman. He’s been thinking of the Axis more often lately than is warranted, pondering his indiscretion in Leela’s quarters. Remembering in particular the sensation of her weight straddling his hips, and her lips open against his, her hot, human tongue inside his mouth. The way she pinned his arms, and the delicious helplessness he felt as she held him down and whispered promises in his ear, her breath humid against his skin.

Of course, on the Axis he’d been drowning in his own mortality and incapable of coping with the physical manifestation of his raw attraction to Leela. He was flailing as he dealt with his own vulnerability, still haunted by the vestiges of his bigotry against non-Gallifreyans. The heady mix of these things overwhelmed his judgment at the time, and he’d acted out of loneliness and fear. He'd regretted kissing Leela, then.

For most of his life, he’d believed his rigidity was strength. After all, the Time Lords have stood implacably astride all of time and space for most of universal history, immutable as eternity itself. They didn’t bend with the ebb and flow of history; history ebbed and flowed around them. When he first met her, Leela’s adaptability, her willingness and ability to change, seemed like weakness. After all, it was the same sort of weakness Romana showed in opening the Academy to alien students, straining against what seemed like a perfectly serviceable system of universal operation. He saw it as weakness that led to disaster on a planetary scale. Narvin’s rigidity began to fracture as the civil war went on and the Dogma Virus rampaged through his people.

On the Axis, losing all of his future regenerations cracked him clean in half, and left him bent against his will, brittle and frail. And there was Leela, who had never gone brittle or cracked in all the time he’s known her. Not when she came to live on an alien planet in an alien culture; not when she was made a widow after twenty-five years of marriage; not when she went blind; and not when thousands of ex-slaves looked to her for guidance and she stepped in, alone, to fill that gap. She adapted as life raged around her, as sturdy and supple as a palm tree in a hurricane.

The Time Lord he was on the Axis would hardly recognize the man who welcomed an alien to leave her knife on his bedside table this evening, and who opened his arms to soothe her to sleep. He feels none of those ugly, brittle emotions anymore, the loneliness or terror of mortality – at least, no more so than his usual baseline survival impulse, an impulse that has waned a fraction over the intervening years, given his drastically shifted loyalties. Leela and Romana’s presence has warmed his life, making it more malleable, molding him around and between the two of them.

His reliance on Leela, in particular, stirs up a fresh kind of anxiety in him. Not only because she has the stubborn habit of saving his life on a regular basis, but also because of how deeply he cares about her thoughts, and her opinions, and her feelings. He admires Romana, but the emotions he feels for Leela are more delicate, more complex – something beyond admiration. He isn’t the same coward he once was, but he still isn’t brave enough to put a proper word on that feeling. If he does, he’ll have to confront the reality that Leela might not return his emotions in equal measure.

Holding her sweltering human body is like standing outside the Citadel under both unfiltered suns. He kicked his legs free of the blanket at some point during his sleep, but she’s cocooned between him and the duvet. Eyes still closed, he curls his body closer and allows himself to linger for a while, luxuriating in her nearness. He savors the sensation of breathing in tandem, soaking in Leela’s warmth like a cat basking in a patch of daylight.

Last night he’d woken up with her practically atop him, her arm and leg coiled around his body. Even in her sleep, she was trying to shield him from a nonexistent enemy. Extracting himself then was much more difficult; tonight he eases himself out from their tangle of arms and legs with only minimal disruption. She shifts a little and murmurs something that sounds vaguely like, “Stay.” He freezes, listening, but she doesn’t speak or open her eyes, so he leaves her alone in the bedroom.

He doesn’t take his usual morning shower because he doesn’t have time; he’ll be buried alive in paperwork. It has nothing to do with the fact that Leela’s somewhat enjoyable scent lingers on his robe and skin, nothing at all. He logs into the APC Net to deal with the several hundred urgent communiques flagged for his attention, and couple dozen directives from Romana about handling the ongoing Unvossi crisis, questions about the unnatural singularity shift at the heart of the Triangulum Galaxy that needs to be dealt with, and the fact that somehow two time-rings have gone missing from the CIA’s vaults.

He hasn’t enjoyed the downshift into Deputy Coordinator, and the corresponding reduction in his professional autonomy. Romana trusts him; he doesn’t doubt that. Her priorities align with his to such a degree that he rarely disagrees with the overall gist of her leadership, as Coordinator. They argue about the details daily, at exhaustive length, but they fundamentally share Gallifrey’s best interest at hearts. The problem is that Romana has _so many_ opinions. Opinions about _everything_. Opinions that cause regular crises, none of which are his fault but all of which end up being his problem.

When she was President and he was Coordinator, he’d had the latitude to deal with these crises more freely. Even as High Chancellor, he’d had more room to breathe than he does now. He’d complain about his current circumstances more than he already does (which isn’t much, really, only once a day or so, maybe twice or six times on a bad day, but definitely not too much), except deep down he’s convinced that this demotion to Deputy Coordinator is cosmic penance, a redress for his profound lapse in judgment in sending Valyes to the Doctor and trying to abort the Daleks’ entire existence.

He could leave Leela alone in his flat and go into the office, but he doesn’t trust her to keep her hands and her eyes to herself while he’s gone. He doesn’t store classified material here, but he’d rather not give her the chance to rifle through his personal things again. As the night drags on, and she continues to sleep, he has to cancel and rearrange four meetings and two briefings, one for a critical mission scheduled to launch today. Pazithi Gallifreya dips toward the horizon, and he tries to nip his growing irritation in the bud. A span later, he isn’t nipping so much as watering and fertilizing the irritation, watching his inbox fill to overflow, rejecting scheduling requests and urgent calls for his presence in the TARDIS bay, and in the CIA’s APC node control room, and at half a dozen other administrative fires that need to be put out.

Yesterday, Leela stayed in bed until both suns rose. Today, she stirs and shuts the lavatory door as the first sun breaks over the horizon. A few minutes later she struts into his study, running a hand through her tousled auburn hair, with a piece of fruit in one hand and her boots and cowl in the other.

At the sight of her, dawn blazing through the window and casting an amber glow over her skin, his irritation withers like a moonflower tossed into the heat of day. He’d forgotten how low cut her tank top was, and how tight her trousers, and the play of light and shadows on her collarbones send his fingers stumbling across his work. He accidentally hits ‘dispatch’ on a half-finished report to General Trave, on recent Dalek incursions into Phaidon space.

“It’s late,” he blurts out, much more harshly than he intends. All of his stored-up annoyance needs somewhere to go, and he can't direct it at Leela anymore, so he turns it square back onto himself. With a swipe of his hand, he puts his desk to sleep, and the translucent APC work screens vanish from midair.

Her expression a blend of amusement and forbearance, she drops her boots and cowl into a nearby chair and turns to the shelves along one wall. Before he can stop her, she picks up one of the delicate miniature devices displayed there, turning it over in her hands. Ignoring his comment, she asks, “Did the previous occupant leave these behind?”

“They’re mine,” he says, coming to pluck it from her fingers, and feeling very justified in his decision to not leave her alone in his flat.

“You collect toys?” she asks, astonished, and reaches for another one. “Narvin, I had no idea you had a hobby, or an interest in children’s things!”

“They aren’t toys, and they certainly aren't for children. I don’t collect them, I build them,” he replies, seizing the second one from her hand. She immediately takes a third, but when he reaches for it she slips sideways, out of arm's length. “They’re useless machines.”

“Useless? Why would you speak of your own hobby with such harsh words?” she asks, tongue touching her lip as she fiddles with the device in her hand. The riveted metal box fits in her palm, and is shaped strangely: long and skinny on one end and rounded on the other, with a small clasp and lid.

Leela figures out the clasp just as Narvin says, “No, no don’t open that!”

The box flips open, and a spoon pops out, clattering to the floor. A second spoon follows, then a third, and within seconds a deafening fountain of spoons crashes around Leela’s feet, all shapes and sizes pouring from the tiny box. She claps a hand over the opening, trying to stanch the flow, but they continue out like water through a broken dam.

Narvin leaps over the growing pile and snatches the device, wrestling the lid shut with a loud _snap_. They stand together in the pile of spoons, hundreds of them, and Leela bursts into delighted laughter.

“A useless machine is a device with a function but no real purpose,” Narvin explains, frowning at the mess on the floor. He won’t have time to clean up before he leaves for work. “This is a Genesis Ark built to hold cutlery.”

“It makes spoons?”

“No, it stores them. And they aren’t supposed to come out. A Genesis Ark is transdimensional prison technology. I think you broke it.”

Leela’s laughter intensifies. “Did you buy or steal these spoons, to bring them home and imprison them for their crimes?”

“I _borrowed_ the spoons,” he replies crisply, placing the miniature Genesis Ark back on the shelf. When he turns back around, Leela has another device in her hands: a rod with a silver button on one end, and golden prongs on the other. She looks to him in anticipation, finger on the button, and waits for him to object to her fiddling. He sighs and shrugs, because trying to stop her would be like standing in front of an avalanche. “That’s a Stattenheim remote. They’re originally designed to summon a TARDIS. Whistle when you squeeze the tab.”

She does as he says, warbling a melodic bird call. The remote vanishes from her left hand, and instantly re-materializes in her right. She gasps in astonishment, delight painting her features. “It summons itself?”

“See? A useless machine,” he replies, taking it and putting it back onto the shelf.

“They might be useless, but they are very clever!” Leela says. Her compliment sends a peculiar warmth through his belly. She hands back the third device without activating it – just as well, because it’s still a work in progress, and the last time he tested it half his desk sublimated into a vapor. “Why do you build them?”

“I expect it’s the same reason you run, even when no one’s chasing you: practice. I enjoy engineering things, and I don’t have call to use these skills, as Coordinator.” He sighs again, very softly. “Deputy Coordinator.” Narvin began building these diversions several decades ago, because everything in his life was so rigidly scaffolded and structured – his work, his relationships, his politics. In the safe, contained privacy of his quarters, he’d indulged in something unstructured, and without any real purpose other than to bring himself enjoyment. It seems fitting that he should be standing here explaining himself to Leela – this alien woman who is the most unstructured, unscaffolded enjoyment he’s ever indulged in.

“I like this hobby,” she says, beaming at him. She collects her belongings and steps over to the hidden door panel, spoons clattering beneath her feet. “Will you demonstrate more of your devices for me later?”

He shuffles through the spoons behind her, and opens the panel. “If you insist.”

“I will,” she promises, squeezing his shoulder and then disappearing into the dim hallway inside the walls.

Narvin wades out of the puddle of cutlery, and blissful silence blankets his empty flat. Nobody else is breathing, or snoring, or singing quietly to themselves. He hasn’t enough time to clean the spoons, so he sorts out the rest of Leela’s mess before he leaves. He straightens couch cushions and tidies tables; he meticulously makes the bed, smoothing out the duvet and placing the pillows just so. Plucking a strand of long red hair from the pillow, his first instinct is to keep it, so he sets it to the side on Leela’s knife table. Not that the knife is there now, but it was – would be – will be. Verb tenses eddy through Narvin’s mind like shifting timelines, rippling across the surface of his thoughts. He carefully ignores the emotions eddying with them.

Shaking his head to rid himself of the strange, sentimental impulse, he takes the hair and deposits it in the trash receptacle, and changes into a fresh robe before leaving for his office. 

Later that day, at the end of Narvin’s afternoon meeting with Romana, she says, “I’m sending Leela away from the Capitol for a while. I’ve brought up the idea of sending her on a mission for the CIA, but she hasn’t been keen, so I’m going to ask her to go as a personal favor. I’d like someone to go with her, someone we trust implicitly to keep her safe and also to take care of some business on my behalf.” She speaks offhandedly, her eyes already riveted to the next order of business on her calendar, but her posture betrays her intensity.

He casts a line: “Ah. Braxiatel, then?” Romana’s been cagey about the why and how of his return, and Narvin hasn’t sussed out whether she’s withholding information or simply doesn’t have it.

“Apparently his hands are full, at the moment.” Lips thin, she huffs softly.

“He’s throwing his hat into the ring for Cardinal again, I take it?”

Romana doesn’t deign to reply, which means she doesn’t know. “I’d send Ace, but this particular task requires a Time Lord’s cultural knowledge and experience. I’d like you to submit a list of agents you recommend.”

“You think Leela should leave the Capitol because of the less-than-favorable press the Monan Host incident continues to garner on the daily vidcasts?”

“No,” Romana snaps. She pauses, and softens. “Well, not entirely. Time away would do Leela some good. You know how she is, too much Time Lord company and recycled air tends to make her restless. After so many years of being her friend, I can see the signs. It’s better to give her something to do than leave her to find trouble on her own. There’s no harm in sending her, for both reasons.”

“And where are you sending her?”

“It isn’t important, Deputy Coordinator. Just give me your recommendation by this evening. Leela leaves tomorrow.”

“I’ll go,” he says, without thinking about the words before he says them, or grasping all of the implications for himself, and how he’s laying them out for Romana to read. She lifts both eyebrows, hand frozen atop the button to summon her aide for the next meeting. “Given the current political situation, it would be prudent to keep your business as private as possible, and in the most trustworthy hands.”

Narvin could name a dozen reliable CIA agents qualified to handle an escort assignment such as this. Agents with far more flexible schedules; agents whose desks aren’t swamped with paperwork, whose calendars aren’t brimming with appointments every hour of the day and night. But not only does he think it essential to keep Romana’s personal business safe, he’s also keen on keeping Leela safe, as well. He doesn’t say as much aloud, and he’d like to think that Romana doesn’t guess his thoughts, either.

“The most trustworthy hands,” she echoes. “Naturally, there’s no one you’d recommend more highly than yourself on that front.”

“Naturally.”

“You haven’t the latitude in your schedule to leave the Capitol, any more than I do,” she says. She’s the one fishing now, casting about for his motivation and the depth of his interest.

“I’ve been looking for an opportunity to test sub-coordinators Mobrax and Hellena, and this situation is ideal. Several days of handling my full schedule between the two of them should be an adequate proving ground.”

“I haven’t the time or inclination to babysit your protégés, Narvin,” she says, but she thoughtfully taps the call button a few times without depressing it. He doesn’t twitch under her scrutiny. “Very well, as you wish. I’m sending Leela to Heartshaven. It was abandoned and burned down several years ago, before we ended up on the Axis. There hasn’t been a housekeep in ages, and I don’t know if any drudges are left. I haven’t any idea what state the structure is in, or how much of it is still standing. I’d like to know if it has begun to repair itself, and whether it’s salvageable. I imagine the assessment will take … hmm, at least five days, perhaps more, in order to properly catalogue the structures and lands.”

He clasps his hands in front of his robe. “Planning to rebuild the Heartshaven wine industry?”

“Coordinator of the CIA isn’t exactly the most lucrative position on Gallifrey, and you declined the executive perks for so many years, they’ve been eliminated from the Agency’s budget.  I hadn’t realized what an atrociously small salary I paid you,” she says dryly. He smirks but doesn’t reply. “Heartshaven’s direct transmat still seems to be operating, so Leela’s traveling that way. The property is isolated, and you won’t find much in the way of lodgings nearby. I thought she’d relish the chance to rough it, especially considering the House has probably gone a bit feral. Are you sure you’re up for this sort of thing?”

Outside the Citadel’s protective dome, in the backwater of Wild Endeavor, without proper shelter? Via _antique transmat_? The only thing worse would be hopping back onto the Axis for another merry-go-round to alternative Gallifreys where he’s either useless, dead, or a megalomaniacal idiot.

“Of course I am,” Narvin replies, his voice and posture both bastions of certainty. "It's only a little fieldwork."

He spends a portion of the day drawing up mission plans, researching the terrain and surrounding area for Heartshaven, requisitioning supplies. He’s accumulated a wealth of data, parsed it out into four dozen or so contingency plans, depending on conditions and his own tolerance for the amount of greenery and fresh air in the vicinity. When he returns to his flat he stays awake long into the evening, picking up spoons and then going over requisition fulfillment reports and inventory logs, and definitely not waiting for a knock at the secret panel in his study.

Pazithi Gallifreya has begun to lower in the sky when he finally decides that the most practical, the most sensible, and wholly logical course of action is to review these mission plans with Leela. This is a joint assignment after all, and she ought to be privy to the supply lists and terrain surveys. They’re transmatting out before sunrise, which means the only practical, sensible, wholly logical thing would be for Narvin to share this information _right now_.

He can’t simply send the file. Since they returned from the Axis, Romana somehow managed to secure Leela her own access to the APC Net, but Rassilon only knows how often she checks her correspondence. She probably wouldn’t see or read it before morning. The only practical, sensible, wholly logical thing is to take a data pad and stop by her flat.

He’s at the secret door to her study, keying in the code, before it occurs to him that he ought to knock first. He hasn’t been inside Leela’s flat since the Moros incident, just after he’d given her the metaphorical keys to the place. Barging into Romana’s office unannounced at work is one thing, but barging into Leela’s private quarters is another thing entirely. Congratulating himself at having avoided embarrassment, he raises his fist to the panel. At the same time, the second secret door that leads to the Coordinator’s quarters slides open behind him.

“I’m sorry to have woken you,” Romana is saying to Leela, “you really can stay in bed. You don’t have to go, even if I’m leaving for work.”

“I would rather not be – oh! Hello, Narvin.” The two women come to an abrupt halt as he turns around, both of them arching a single eyebrow at the exact same amplitude. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up, his self-preservation instinct screeching explicit instructions about how he should be _turning invisible, right this very instant_.

“What in the Seven Systems are you doing?” Romana says, studying him from head to toe.

Narvin lifts his data pad instinctively, the same way a gladiator would lift a shield. “Mission briefing. For tomorrow. With Leela.”

“Surely you don’t expect her to work in the middle of the night!” Romana says. “You both ought to rest, before you leave.”

Leela’s mouth has shifted into a sly smile as she watches him squirm – metaphorically, of course. He’s standing perfectly still and composed, a portrait of Time Lord dignity. The warm sensation on his face isn’t a blush, it’s a result of the inadequate airflow in these goddamn extradimensional passageways.

At this point, the fragment of their conversation he overheard sinks in, and it dawns on him that Romana has her shoulder pressed against Leela’s arm. Leela’s barefoot, her hair is tousled in the same way it has been in his flat the last two mornings, and a few faint lines dent her cheek from where she was resting against something. She’s been sleeping – at least – in Romana’s quarters, and Narvin’s entire brain buzzes out with static as he attempts to grasp the infinite implications and complications this revelation brings into his ongoing jumble of Leela-related feelings.

She takes pity on his glassy stare and saves him: “Do not worry, Romana. I will not let him keep me awake long. I will be ready to leave on time.” Reaching past him, she touches the invisible keypad and her flat opens. “Come along, Narvin. Show me this important work that could not wait until morning.”

When the door closes, he follows her into her living area. She has rearranged the furniture, eliminating the most obnoxious Rassilonate rococo pieces, minimizing the amount of flourished gilding. The largest wall, originally decorated with a collection of paintings, has been re-hung with a display of knives. More than a dozen are artistically arranged together, each larger and more terrifying than the last, and Narvin counts at least seven different planets of origin among them.

In a monumental feat of willpower, he keeps his mouth shut about the astonishingly illegal collection, but he makes a bolded, underlined mental note to track down how she got her hands on such specimens. He can think of several things he’d like to do to Leela right now, but arresting her for possession of forbidden alien weaponry inside the Capitol isn’t on his agenda tonight.

She stops beside the red velvet couch and turns to face him. As if reading his thoughts, she says, “You are not here for a mission briefing.”

“I am so! I’ve prepared for every contingency,” he replies, handing her the data pad as proof. “All the survival supplies and weapons we might need, depending on the state of the –”

“Tell me tomorrow. I’m too tired now,” she interrupts, hiding an enormous yawn behind the back of her hand. She tosses the data pad on the couch without so much as a glance, and threads her fingers with his to pull him into the bedroom. This dim space is exactly as he expected: all the furniture removed, a generous layering of thick, soft rugs and pillows covering the floor. She plops down, running her hand through her hair and staring up at him expectantly. “If you have nothing to offer besides a mission briefing, then you may leave my quarters now.”

He opens his mouth once, his entire body tingling with anticipation and want, fizzing until his lingering concern about Romana evaporates for the evening. Following her down, he lets her nudge him onto his side and arrange an enormous pillow beneath both their heads. She curls her body against his back, and in the faint light from the other room, he can see just enough to reach for a nearby blanket, and he spreads it across them both.

Leela drapes her arm over his ribs, and presses her cheek to the nape of his neck. Her warm breath tickles his skin as she says, “I am glad you came, Narvin.”

His only reply is to take her hand and clasp it to his chest.

 

~~~~~~

 

**Set shortly after “Gallifrey: Erasure”**

 

Leela wakes up in a dim room, the scent of antiseptic and chemical medicines burning her nose. She blinks at the unremarkable white ceiling and tries to identify the soft, regular beeping noise in her ear.

A medi-dais.

Why is she sleeping in someone else’s sick-room?

She tries to lift her head, and the effort squeezes a groan from her aching neck, which only partially consents to her effort. She sees enough to verify that she’s in a medical facility, probably one of the better ones on Gallifrey. Every surface, from the walls to the sparse furniture, is modular and cold, dotted with a smattering of blinking mechanical panels.

“Stop, wait. Don’t do that.” Narvin’s voice, somewhere to the right of the bed. He comes into her field of vision, leaning over her with concern painted across his features. His hand touches something on the side of the medi-dais, and the top half of it rises, lifting her into a half-reclined position instead of flat on her back. “Better?”

“What did you do?” she says, her voice gravelly from disuse. Disappointment and fear churn through her stomach as the realization sinks in: this is her own sick-room, and she’s been here a while.

“I sat you up,” he replies. “If you’d prefer to be on your back, just –”

“No,” she rasps.

His face cracks into the barest of smiles, his eyes like beacons of worry. “Pandak's ghost, it’s good to see you awake.”

“How long?”

“Four days,” he replies. She feels something against her left elbow: Narvin easing her arm into a more comfortable position so he can hold her hand. “After the accident, they put you in an induced coma, until the swelling in your – well, until the swelling subsided.”

Leela closes her eyes, because looking at anything at all feels like an impossible effort. She reaches for the memory, or any memory at all, to show her what accident he means.

 _An enormous house, half living thing and half burnt timbers, all impossible angles. A forest grown up to the walls, silver-leafed saplings creeping into acres of untended vineyards. The cool shade of a dormant loomshed and an abandoned grape-press. Sun-soaked red grass, dust motes drifting in the warm afternoon, fresh air saturating Leela’s very marrow – she felt so_ alive _. Fruit from the vine, juice trickling down her chin, and the sound of Narvin sputtering, then laughing, as she pitched grapes at him over a hedgerow. The magnificent sensation of physical exhaustion after hours of exploration as he took notes of their discoveries, the two of them scrambling through endless fields of vineyards and outbuildings._

Narvin tugs her hand, drawing her back to the present as he stretches for the call button on the nearby communication panel. “I should summon the surgeon.”

“Wait,” she says, opening her eyes and attempting to wave him back. This movement, or lack thereof, is when she realizes her right side is covered in a stiff bandage, thick and immobilizing. She wrinkles her nose at it. “I do not wish to be poked and prodded. I am sure they have had their sport while I slept.”

“They won’t find you easy prey any more. Their own fault, for agreeing to treat a wild lioness.” She laughs, and then winces. Her head aches. Narvin squeezes her hand, and she squeezes back. “Be still.”

“Do not tell me what to do. I am not one of your CIA underlings,” she replies automatically, even as she obeys, head resting on the sterile pillow.

A data pad sits on her blankets, because he’s been working at her bedside. Of course. He never does anything else but work, here in the Capitol. He asks, “Do you remember what happened?”

_A lonely spirit as large as a house, not unwelcoming but not entirely pleased at their presence. Endless dim rooms, each bigger inside than out, all thick with shadows and scurrying things – pig-rats, she’d assumed. She was only partially correct. Narvin hesitating in the doorway of a bedchamber in an unburnt wing of the structure, waiting for permission to follow Leela into the four-poster bed that she had declared suitable for the evening. Their bodies tangling together inside a two-person sleepsack atop the dusty mattress, and waking up in the middle of the night as the bed lumbered out of the charred entry hall and onto the front lawn, carrying them along._

_She’d nudged him until his eyes opened. She asked, “Am I dreaming?”_

_“No. The furniture walks sometimes,” he whispered into her ear as they held onto each other, staring up at the stars. “It’s a thing that happens, with these ancient houses.”_

“I remember the house, with its black timbers and weak foundations.” Her eyebrows draw together. “The ground trembled, and the staircase fell.” The premonition of Narvin’s death from earlier that week still haunted her mind, and she had shielded his body with her own as the ceiling came down.

“Yes, there was an earthquake. You broke your shoulder, and took a blow to the head, and it was a while before help arrived. The surgeons have been concerned about your memory, and …” he swallows “… potential damage. Do you remember …” He hesitates again, and the strangeness of it prompts her to focus on his face. His expression is soft, and worried. The look is novel and unsettling, for Narvin. “Was there anything else you remember? Anything I said?”

_The next morning, they'd stood in a dim, narrow stairwell in the back of the house. A man’s portrait hung on the wall, his eyes following Leela’s every movement. With his stern gaze and frown, he bore a striking resemblance to Narvin, save for the bushy beard down his chest. “The look suits you! So handsome and distinguished. You should grow one,” she had laughed, seizing his chin and turning his face back and forth, as if inspecting for stubble. His data pad, and the task of taking inventory of the house, hung forgotten in his hand as she stroked his cheek._

_“You’d like it?” He spoke of the beard, but he didn’t really mean the beard at all._

_Leela’s laughter faded under the intensity of his gaze and the unfettered desire it held. Her cheeks warmed to pink, her chest tight with anticipation as she traced her thumb across his bottom lip, tugging his mouth open a fraction. “I would like it very much,” she murmured, and her words shook the earth and brought the house down._

“I felt so cold. You said my smile was devastating, and spoke of the Doctor, and the Bella … Bellesc-something? I don’t know.” There are more of Narvin’s words buried in the darkness, indistinct in the back of her mind. She cannot see or touch them, with this headache. But perhaps later, they will become clear. She doesn’t try to force them now. “You saved my life.”

Relief flashes across his face. Leela wonders if it’s because of what she said, or maybe because of something she didn’t say. “We do seem to have both fallen into that habit, saving each other.”

She grips his hand tighter, holding him by the medi-dais even as he rises to his feet, and she says, “Thank you.”

“Braxiatel and Ace have been by several times. Romana has been here so much, she missed two meetings and Livia chided her in front of the Inner Council. She left moments ago; she’ll be livid to find out I was the one here when you woke up,” he replies with forced joviality, grasping for a semblance of normalcy.

“I would like to see Romana very much. But I’m glad it was you.” She stares up at him, her affection and gratitude plain.

He blinks, his eyebrows drawing together as he swallows. This time, when he tries to extract his hand, she lets go. Instead of paging the surgeon, he goes to the door and presses a few buttons. The light beside the panel goes from green to red: unlocked to secured.

Returning to the medi-dais, he perches on the edge and reaches out with whisper-light fingertips to touch her cheek. Even with all his gentleness, the contact aches – she has no idea what her face looks like, but it feels sore. He strokes her hair, and she closes her eyes.

The dais shifts beneath his weight as he lays down beside her, moving carefully so as not to jostle her too much. His head comes to rest against her medical robe, on the uninjured left side of her chest, his ear over her single heart – the same thing she did after her premonition of his death. He listens, and pulls in a shaky breath.

The medi-dais gives a warning beep at his unexpected life signs, interfering with its ability to monitor its patient. A louder alarm sounds somewhere down the corridor, alerting the staff of a potential medical crisis. Leela puts her arm around his shoulders and kisses the crown of his head. His short hair tickles her mouth, the scent of his soap familiar and reassuring. He reaches for her left hand, bringing it around to press her palm to his lips.

Someone tries the door, and it buzzes in protest. Narvin inhales sharply, pushing himself up.

“Don’t let them in,” Leela pleads, her uninjured hand fisting into his sleeve to keep him on the medi-dais. “Rest with me here.”

“They’ll break it down,” he mutters. “They called in a pair of xenobiology tutors from the Academy, because thanks to Magistrix Borusa your biology isn’t strictly human anymore, and this wasn’t just a broken bone or two. It was a serious cranial injury. The medical facilities weren’t equipped to handle this sort of alien emergency. They’ve modified the medi-dias to your unique readings. Watching them hover over you is like watching a first-year student fiddle with a Science Fair project.”

“But you _have_ been watching them,” she says.

“Between Romana, Braxiatel, Ace and I, one of us is always keeping an eye,” he replies. “To make sure no one gets carried away in the wrong direction.”

She smiles, releasing his sleeve. “Good.”

He stands up and pauses just long enough to lean forward and kiss her forehead. With pink cheeks, he turns to unlock the buzzing door. A small crowd of medical personnel stand outside, and two women in green robes push past Narvin, swarming to Leela’s bedside.

In spite of her loud, persistent protests, the surgeons insist on keeping her in the medical facility for a full week. Their ministrations irk her, keep her awake all hours of the night and day with checkups and tests, until she can scarcely contain the desire to choke every single one of them on sight. Ace brings her yarn and knitting needles, to give her something to do, and she takes to flinging them at the ceiling with her good arm, so they lodge into the tiles like throwing knives. The surgeons mend her shoulder, alternating medicines and devices to stimulate bone growth and repair her torn muscles. They fix her cuts and bruises, so that they heal with hardly any scars at all.

They haven’t any such technological miracles to fix her head.

“A Time Lord brain is better equipped to handle this sort of injury: we can portion off the affected areas, while the rest of our cognition and mental function compensates. Your human biology is a different matter altogether. You have to minimize stimulation for your entire brain,” xenobiology Tutor Baraz says, as she authorizes Leela’s discharge from the medical facility. “Three weeks of mandatory bed rest. Keep your eyes closed, so your brain can repair itself. And I do mean _complete_ rest, no vidcasts, no reading, no loud music or public spaces. If you have a headache, take the medicine I’ve given you. I’ll be by your quarters every few days, to check in on your progress.”

Romana, Narvin, Braxiatel and Ace seem to have worked out a supervision schedule between themselves, taking shifts, someone coming by her quarters at least once a day to keep her company for a while. It’s almost as if they think her incapable of being still, and doing what she’s told. They stock her kitchen with food – not pills, but real food, and Ace even brings meals from Leela’s favorite food stalls in MidTown. They chide her when they find her out of bed, which happens every time one of them stops by.

Narvin comes more often than the rest, on this mysterious supervision schedule. Often that means he crosses paths with the others in her apartment, and on the second day, as Leela tosses and turns and suffers in the bedroom, she overhears him with Romana in the living area:

“I know you feel guilty, but this wasn't your fault. You can’t just take care of her, Narvin. You have to take care of yourself too. Go home for a span, get some sleep, take a shower. You haven’t shaved in days,” she says.

He clears his throat, and Leela imagines him folding his hands in front of his robe, as he usually does when he makes that sound. He’s probably shifting from one foot to another, too. “Actually, I’m growing it out.”

A long beat of silence. “On purpose?”

“Yes.”

“A _beard_?” Romana’s volume goes down, even as her voice pitches up in amusement.

“That is the technical term for it, yes,” he retorts tartly. “Well done, Romana.”

“Oh dear,” she snickers. “Is this a sign of some sort of existential crisis? That’s the sort of thing people do, isn’t it? A drastic haircut, or an Eskera class Galaxy Slim-Skimmer with ultra-chrome attachments, or a fresh regeneration if they really want to go all-out?”

“I could hardly go all-out anymore, even if I was inclined,” he replies, still dour. “And no, this isn’t an existential crisis. I don’t need to justify my personal grooming choices. It isn’t like I said anything disparaging when you decided to cut your hair short, to look like vidcast Commentator Craesus.”

“Commentator Craesus?” Romana huffs. “I’ll have you know that she cut her hair a week after I did, not the other way around. Is your memory failing in your old age, Narvin?”

“You’re the one who forgets, I know all of the top-secret technology you have access to, now that you’re sitting in the Coordinator’s chair. And that’s the exact sort of thing I’d say, if I was you, and trying to cover up an illegal time-jump to my barber.” Romana snorts, and he says, “Speaking of time jumps, aren’t you late for the debrief on the Chaska Minor mission? The agents were scheduled to be in your office, ohhh, five microspans ago.” 

“Damn,” Romana gasps, the door buzzing behind her as she leaves.

Leela’s headaches come and go. She never takes the medicine, because she can’t stand the chemical taste, and the fact that it makes her feel like she’s swimming in treacle. Some days she looks out the window or watches the Public Register Video for too long, and the pain starts up in her temples and doesn’t go away for hours. Some days she keeps her eyes shut, just as the surgeon ordered, and the pain throbs in the back of her skull anyway. Some days there’s no ache at all, and she almost feels normal. But the requirement to keep her eyes closed is always an uncomfortable reminder of the years she spent in darkness, when her sight was lost to the bomb in the Artron Forum.

Each of Leela’s caretakers have a different strategy for enforcing the mandate for rest. Braxiatel comes with leather-bound books, his sonorous voice lulling her into a trance. It reminds her of being with the Doctor, and time spent in the TARDIS library while he read Alfred Lord Tennyson or Alice Walker. Ace trades stories, the two of them taking turns sharing about their own incarnation of the Doctor and the adventures he took them on. Romana sometimes curls up to sleep with Leela, and sometimes speaks of politics until Leela dozes off out of sheer boredom.

Narvin always rests with her in the bedroom, or sits on the couch with her head cradled in his lap. Sometimes he complains about his work, or they talk, or they argue, but often they relax in contented silence. Leela likes being alone with Narvin more than anyone else, she decides, because the quiet between them is always comfortable and easy.

As the first week of healing progresses, her memories of the time they spent at Heartshaven come into focus. She feels the delighted thump of her heart when he held her hand for no particular reason at all, as they strolled back to the House at dusk. She sees his elation, when she praised him for packing a sleepsack large enough to share. She recalls the fragile layers of clothing between them, as they wrapped arms and legs around each other in that wild place, so far away from everyone and everything else. His fingertips massaged the small of her back; her mouth lingered near the hollow of his throat without touching skin; and a delicious ache gnawed at her belly. But she hadn’t taken what she wanted that night, because they had so much time before they had to return to the Capitol and no reason to rush. They lay in silence, breathing in tandem and savoring the intimacy of shared anticipation.

Narvin’s words surface from the darkness, as well – the story he told her as they waited for rescue. The Doctor, and a boy named Adric, and a people called the Bellesconds. His confession, about what he and Romana had done to those people; his brokenness, as he spoke of his remorse. His passion when he spoke of her and the ways her influence had changed him, and made him better. His worry, about her forgiveness and her trust. 

Leela spends her days alternating between these thoughts, and crawling out of her skin from her enforced rest. By the time the sixth day comes around, she’s done thinking and waiting. Narvin shows up with a bag of fresh food and a litany of annoyances from a meeting with the Security Council. He barges in the secret door in her study without knocking, as has become his custom. Huffily yanking off his tabard, he tosses it into a chair and begins refilling the food lockers her kitchen.  Leela is lying on her red velvet couch, eyes closed, and he’s so caught up in his annoyance that he forgets to say hello before he begins recounting the indignities that Castellan Kelldrix and General Trave have visited upon the CIA. If she wanted to, she could let him continue uninterrupted, and he’d eventually wind himself down, like a spinning top.

She might be crawling out of her skin with all of this enforced inactivity, but she is also an experienced hunter, and she has spent the last few hours conserving her strength in anticipation of this moment. Rising from the couch with the quiet stealth of a raptor winging in on prey, she swoops into the kitchen. It’s a testament to his deep distraction that he doesn’t register her movement until she’s just behind him. He turns, eyes opening wide, ready to say something – probably to chide her for being vertical.

Rising onto her toes, she slips her arms around the back of his neck and kisses him. The contact is gentle and exploratory. His lips are as soft as she remembers, from their encounter so long ago on the Axis, and the warm anticipation in her belly lights into something brighter and fiercer. She touches his mouth twice, three times, and then pulls just far enough away to stare up at him.

“You’re supposed –” he squeaks, then clears his throat and manages a deeper register “– supposed to be resting.”

“I have been. All day. It has given me much time to think of new activities I can do with my eyes shut.” Her eyelids flutter closed and she rises higher on her tiptoes, lips in a tempting pout. “See? Just as the surgeon requires, for my recuperation.”

“Leela,” he starts, a little breathless. She can feel his pulse thumping quicker than usual, can practically hear his thoughts racing even faster. “I shouldn’t –” She interrupts by cupping a hand to the back of his head, pulling his face to hers again, mouth open a fraction. Her tongue brushes across his bottom lip, an offer and an enticement.

He pulls back this time, swallowing heavily. She brings her hand around to press a thumb to the deep, worried crease that has formed between his eyebrows, trying to smooth it away.

“Shall I tell you what you are thinking, Narvin?” she says.

“By all means, you may try,” he replies, the words drizzled with a thin layer of sarcasm that she has come to expect. Beneath, however, is a plea that matches the concern in his expression he gazes down at her.

“You think that because I was injured, I am weak right now, and that perhaps I cannot make decisions in my current state.”

“Yes.” She reads in his blue-grey eyes that isn’t all he’s worried about, but it’s enough for now.

“I remember finding the bearded portrait in the hallway, just before the earthquake,” she says with a smile, stroking his fresh whiskers with the back of her knuckles. “I remember wishing to kiss you then. Do you think that I would no longer wish to kiss you, because you saved my life?”

He shakes his head a fraction, and she feels a subtle shift in his posture, like a pebble tumbling down a cliff before the entire rock face gives way. 

She continues, “I knew your thoughts then, too. You and I both wanted the same thing in that hallway. And has your wish changed?”

In answer his arms come around her torso, lifting her up to kiss her again. She grins against his mouth, humming in delight, and opens her lips. He responds in kind, head angling as his tongue meets hers. Her feet dangle as she hangs onto his shoulders, her toes tingling, and he’s shuffling forward, taking them both toward the nearby credenza. It’s an ugly thing, overwrought and gilded, but it happens to be precisely the right height for him to lift her up and seat her on it, so she can still reach his mouth as he stands in front of her.

He tastes faintly of tea, and his cooler body temperature feels familiar and comforting, in a way that reminds her of Andred and simultaneously doesn’t, not at all. The Time Lord in her arms now is a very different man, and she’s glad of it – glad of who he is – glad of being here like this with him, especially. She cracks her eyes open just enough to see Narvin’s are closed, and to be sure that his worried expression has melted away.  

His stubble scratches her chin and cheeks, a pleasant sensation, as they move in tandem, heads tilting and shifting as they explore various angles. In her eagerness she bumps his teeth, and he chuckles against her lips, and it’s the sexiest noise she’s heard in ages. Her heels hook around the back of his thighs, drawing him in until he’s pressed against the credenza, his hips between her knees, and there’s no space between their bodies. One of his hands cups her jaw, his thumb against her cheek and fingers spread into her hair.

They stay like this, tongues and lips and hands moving in a leisurely dance, until Leela’s head spins. She can’t tell if it’s because of her injury, or because her whole body is aching with the desire to push Narvin into her bedroom and take him to the floor and continue what they’ve started.

She breaks away, grasping for her bearings. He chases her lips, leaning forward as she leans back, a needy groan escaping from the back of his throat. She grants him one last kiss before taking his face in her hands and bringing their foreheads together instead. His eyes flutter open, his dazed expression as close to drunkenness as she’s ever seen him.

“Leela.” As a whole, the Time Lords only worship themselves, but the word sounds like a prayer.

“Yes,” she replies, grinning breathlessly.

His thumb strokes her cheek, his other hand resting at her hip, and he stares at her like she’s a paean in Old High Gallifreyan, one he’s desperate to translate but that lies just beyond his abilities.

“I should rest now,” she says, lowering her gaze, because his regard is so intense that she can’t inhale properly. She ends up staring at his lips instead, which are enticingly pink and swollen from the time she’s spent abusing them. He tips his face forward just enough to brush the tip of her nose with his own, his cool breath tickling her skin, but he doesn’t try to kiss her again.

Stepping away, he helps her down from the credenza. She steadies herself before taking the first step, and her dizzy state is certainly her injury, because now all she can think about is getting horizontal and resting.

They settle on the couch, him sitting at one end, with a pillow and her head in his lap. Leela hums to herself as he reads, his fingers carding through her hair until she falls asleep. Some time later, she wakes to find herself cradled in his arms as he carries her to the bedroom. Warm and drowsy, she seizes his hand as he puts her down, so he won’t leave. He joins her under the blanket, pressing a single, gentle kiss to her lips. She burrows into his side, and drifts off again.

He’s gone when she wakes up in the morning, and he never does remember to tell her exactly what Castellan Kelldrix said about him to the Security Council.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The events of this interlude](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16580312) happen sometime before this chapter, chronologically speaking.
> 
> This chapter isn't associated with any specific episode of Gallifrey, but it occurs immediately after the previous chapter - so it's located between "Erasure" and "Time War Volume 1." If you'd like a Cliff's Notes of Gallifrey canon up to this point, [you can find that here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/36608517)

Narvin’s next visit is a disaster.

Leela's day starts out well enough, if somewhat boring. A checkup from xenobiology Tutor Baraz, and Ace stops by before she leaves the planet on a mission for Romana. Leela bathes with her sweetest herbal soap, and pulls her hair up, and chooses a soft blue Time Lord dress from her the closet, instead of her usual collection of earth-toned leather clothes. If she can’t leave the building or watch the Public Register Video, she’ll at least entertain herself by playing dress-up. She ponders, with great care and attention, every surface in her flat, and which ones might be optimal for pinning Narvin to when she kisses him again. A thin, painful thread lances through her skull throughout the day, but the headache is manageable, so she mostly ignores it.

Late in the evening, the secret door in the study opens. She goes greet him, and Narvin rushes the last few steps into her arms. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was running. He doesn’t try to talk – not much, anyway – just her name in gasping breaths as their mouths crash together, and he walks her back up against the wall, pinning her fast.

“I was in your thoughts today,” she laughs, when she finally breaks for air. His hands press flat against the paneling beside her shoulders, and he tips his head sideways and leans down further to kiss his way along her jaw. He mumbles something into her skin, but she only catches the words _damnable distraction_. She isn’t sure if work distracted him from her, or she distracted him from work, but she finds the sentiment satisfactory either way.

Placing a hand on his chest, between his hearts, she nudges him away. “I’m hungry.”

“Yes,” he sighs, leaning into her again, and she decides he definitely meant _work_ was the distraction.

Tutor Baraz made it clear that her strict regimen of rest had led to such quick recuperation, and her headaches might go away within the week if she continues with such self-control – otherwise she’d consider letting Narvin satiate himself. As it is, she dodges out of the way and heads into the other room.

“I ate breakfast with Romana, and have decided we shall have a picnic dinner in your flat, so that I will have left my quarters twice today.”

Narvin grows quiet. When she reappears with the prepared bag of food, she finds him solemn.

“What is it?”

His forehead knits together in concern. “What are you wearing?”

“Do you like it?” She sways, the long, soft skirt rippling back and forth. “It is a Time Lord thing from my closet. A house dress? That’s what Romana has called hers, when she wears one.”

“Does she?” Narvin says, his distressed expression unchanged. He doesn’t seem upset, just uncomfortable, like he’d seen a spider but lost track of it, and now it’s reappeared.

“You do not like it.”

“Let’s go,” he says, plucking the food from her hand and leading the way through the secret tunnels to his quarters. He’s strangely quiet, an aura of worry draped around him throughout dinner. Afterward, she lures him onto the couch and arranges herself sideways across his lap, for optimal kissing logistics. He’s still distracted, his eyes open and attention unfocused.  

She wiggles against his thighs to help his concentration, pressing her lips to the corner of his mouth. “Narvin?”

“Romana,” he blurts out in reply.

Leela freezes for an eternal instant, and then draws away to stare at him. The silence in his flat is absolute, as if even the air recirculation system has halted its operation in shock.

“You have forgotten who is kissing you? Or perhaps you are making a request?” she asks, deadly calm. “Think carefully about your next words, Time Lord.”

“I didn’t forget!” He speaks in a conspiratorial whisper, waving his hand between the two of them. “I was just wondering if you’ve said anything to – I mean, have you told her?”

Leela squints as her headache flutters, like a creature inhaling inside her skull. She crosses her arms, contemplating whether to get off of his lap. She isn’t in a mood to kiss him anymore, but this position gives her a tactical advantage, depending on which way this conversation ends. “You are worried that Romana will find out that I’ve chosen to take you as a lover, and it will bring shame on you?”

Narvin’s eyes go wide as saucers, and he swallows with a clicking noise. “Take as a lover –?”

“I _had_ thought to do so, after my recuperation is finished. We shall see if my decision has changed, by the end of this conversation,” she says. “Stop answering my questions with more questions, and explain yourself.”

“I was under the impression that you and Romana … that you are … I don’t know,” he trails off, helplessly wide-eyed. “And that maybe she ought to know, if we’re going to be … lovers.” The last word is a puff of air, as self-conscious as the blush on his cheeks. “But maybe I’m wrong.”

His earlier discomfort, in her flat, falls into context. Leela hasn’t necessarily been expecting this conversation, but she isn’t surprised by his concern over precedence – it’s in his Time Lord nature to be preoccupied with such things, as much as it’s in his nature to argue. The granular details of her relationship with Romana aren’t his to worry over, however, and she isn’t inclined to explain herself to anyone.

“Romana is my oldest friend, but what happens between you and me is none of her business, until I choose to make it so,” Leela says. “Unless you have some reason of your own, that you would like to knock on her door right now and tell her? Is there some CIA rule that I am not aware of, requiring you to ask your chieftain’s permission before you choose a lover? Was this something you did for your underlings, when you were Coordinator?”

“Of course not!”

“Good,” Leela says. “Anyway, she may be your CIA chieftain, but she is not mine. I choose to follow her when I wish, but she is not my commanding officer.”

Narvin is the one who freezes this time, growing perfectly still, like an animal in the wild trying to blend in with its surroundings. If he’d been wearing Cerulean colors to match his blue couch, instead of his black and white CIA clothes, the effect might have been more successful.

“What. Tell me.” Leela doesn’t even bother to make it sound like a question, because she knows him well enough to realize that something else has occurred to him – something he doesn’t want to share. Exasperation weighs down her midsection like a stone in her belly, and the pain at her temple throbs deeper into her skull, rooting and spreading like a pernicious vine. The combination makes her mildly nauseous.

He doesn’t look afraid, necessarily, or even worried. He has achieved a perfectly blank expression, as if his emotions have transcended into a different plane of existence, leaving only a Narvin-shaped shell behind. “It isn’t my place to say.”

“Aha, this is a secret between you and Romana,” she says, again not bothering to phrase it as a question, because it’s obvious. “Do you wish me to knock on her door right now? I will discover what you are hiding, whether I force it from you or her.”

His blank gaze turns calculating as they stare at each other, neither willing to flinch. The longer and more intensely she stares, the sharper that pain in her temple grows, but she studiously ignores it. Finally, she stands up and marches toward the secret passageway.

“Romana did it to protect you,” Narvin says behind her, still carefully neutral on the couch.

“Fine, I will speak with her, then,” she says, reaching for the invisible keypad to open the door.

“Wait!” He’s on his feet, striding after her. “She’s running a mission ops team right now, you can’t interrupt that!”

Leela rounds on him, arms crossed. “You will tell me this secret right now, or I will go to Romana and ask in front of everyone there.”

“I could lock you in my quarters,” he says.

“You would risk your life by trying?” she retorts, eyes narrowed.

His gaze darts down her body, as if calculating his chances at besting her in a physical contest. Fortunately for him, he reaches the correct conclusion: “No.”

“Then tell me, what is this secret thing you and Romana did to protect me? Because you both agreed to it, I can see as much in your face.”

He crosses his arms, shifting his weight between both feet, bracing himself like a beachgoer watching an incoming tsunami. “A matter of spans after Livia’s inauguration, your status as presidential bodyguard was officially revoked, and you lost the protection of that office.”

“You think to stall, by telling me things I already know?”

He makes a placating gesture with both hands, a plea for patience. “Not long after you and I left for Heartshaven, a cabal of Cardinals introduced an expedited motion to the Inner Council, to suspend your visa status and have you ejected off-planet. You can imagine the reasons they gave, for such a drastic step.”

Leela frowns as the crawling vine in her head throbs like a living thing. “I am certain your people spoke the words ‘savage’ and ‘Monan Host’ in their devious meetings behind closed doors.” Her eyelid twitches, pain radiating down her cheek. She curls her toes into the cold tile, to focus her concentration on something besides the pain. “They did this because they thought Romana weak, after she resigned the presidency. They sought to send me away, because I am her ally.”

“Exactly,” he replies.

“You are still stalling, Narvin. Confess what you and Romana did.”

“After the earthquake, those same Cardinals arranged to have the Capitol’s medical facilities refuse to treat you. You weren’t under the protection of the presidential office anymore, your visa status was in question, and your prognosis … it wasn’t good. They would’ve been happy to see you gone, whether you were banished or dead. Romana and I agreed that there was only one way to ensure that you couldn’t be deported, and that you got access to the best medical care available. We officially brought you onboard as a CIA asset.”

Icy silence stretches across the room, thin and brittle, as Leela stares at him. When she speaks her voice shatters it like a hammer: “An _asset_?”

“An agent.” He practically quivers with the effort of keeping himself calm. His face might be placid, but Leela reads his true feelings in his eyes: he’s annoyed that she will not immediately concede to his twisted logic, and hurt that she thinks so little of his Agency. She has never cared for the CIA, and maybe the fact that Romana is now in charge could change that, and that bothers him more than he’d ever admit. 

“I know what ‘asset’ means!” Louder, still. That ache grows into her scalp, and pulses deep inside her cranium, the tangled knot suddenly riddled with thorns. “You made _me_ part of the _CIA_ , without asking my permission?!”

“You were rather unconscious at the time!” he snaps, striding half a dozen steps one way, and then back the other, his lanky frame stiff with irritation. “What else would you expect us to do, when your life was in the balance? You’d rather we let them ship you to an Outsider’s cut-rate butcher shop, or jettison you past the transduction barriers in an escape pod while you were still bleeding?”

“I do not want to be an _asset_ of the CIA!” Leela is shouting now, syllables bursting out in rhythm with her pounding head.

He comes to an abrupt halt, finger pointing vaguely in her direction. “I personally took a trip in a de-listed TARDIS to retroactively apply your Agency status, right at the moment Romana resigned the presidency! Do you know how _illegal_ that sort of meddling is? Gallifreyan bureaucracy is practically as sacrosanct as the artifacts of Rassilon, and in an earlier era I could’ve been subjected to the mind probe!”

“I will not be pressed into doing dirty work for your den of CIA vipers,” she yells. She blinks, and the room seems to sway. The sensation is akin to being in the midday heat without water, like her body has detached from her aching head. Her ears ring and her vision swims with vibrant green tendrils, sound and color where there really is none.

“That’s settled then! I’ll arrange for your pink slip and ride off-planet at the earliest convenience!” The words spout from his mouth, followed by a look of dismay, as if he’s just realized that she could decide to take him up on his offer.

“My head!” she shouts, and there’s no reason for yelling this particular warning, except she’s gotten to this volume and can’t seem to find the mechanism for ratcheting back down.

“Thick as a nebular occlusion, and just as baffling!” he retorts, keeping to the comfortable terrain of verbal repartee even as he steps forward, his dismay shifting into alarm as Leela sways to one side.

Another wave of nausea washes over her, stronger this time, her vision churning along with her stomach. Her eyes slip closed and she keels forward, reaching blindly for something, anything to keep her feet.

“Leela!”

As her knees hit the floor, he lunges and throws his arms around her torso, preventing her from collapsing completely. He brings her to the ground gently, cradling her in his lap. His hands flutter helplessly at her shoulders, and her hair, as if looking for a reset switch to fix whatever’s wrong. “Pandak’s ghost, what is it? I swear, if you just swooned in order to win an argument I’ll –”

“Sevateem warriors do not swoon. I told you, it is my aching head.” The protest comes out as more of a whimper than she intended, so she adds, with feeling, “Idiot.”

“You swooned. Tutor Baraz left medicine, didn’t she? In your quarters?”

“No medicine,” she says, clutching his hand tighter. “It tastes like poison.” She wants to open her eyes, to orient herself so the dizziness will go away, but the pain in her temples throbs so steadily that she can’t move her eyelids. Bringing up a hand, she catches Narvin’s forearm and feels her way to his hand, folding their fingers together. The gesture grounds her, and the room slows down.

“You think I’ll sit by and watch you flop around in pain because you’re too thick-headed to take medicine specially designed for your strange biology? Wait here, I’ll fetch it,” he snaps, on the verge of panic. “And if you won’t take it, I’ll have you re-admitted to the medical facility as a wounded CIA operative.”

Leela finally forces her eyes open, squinting at his silhouette. With her head in his lap, his arms around her, and the worry in his voice, she can practically feel the clammy damp of Heartshaven’s wine cellar, and hear the slow drip of moisture on the walls as they waited for rescue. Then, her injury was physical and cerebral. Now that her bodily wounds are healed, Narvin could perhaps do more than simply keep her awake with stories.

“I don’t need medicine or the medical facility.” She brings the back of his hand to her cheek, and her next word is permission and pleading, all at once: “Contact.”

“Wh – what?”

“Help me to rest. Time Lords can do that, can they not?” Leela knows very well that he can – or should be able to, given the kind of psychic training Andred told her was common for his people. They were married for twenty-five years, and this sort of joining featured regularly in their private moments. It had never occurred to her, before seeing shock dawn on Narvin’s face, that it might not be common for all Gallifreyans to indulge in such intimacy with those they care about.

Or perhaps he doesn’t want to because she’s alien.

She closes her eyes again, because the light makes her skull feel like it might explode, and Narvin’s expression fills her chest with a sticky, hot embarrassment. Is he mortified at the idea of joining with anyone, or with her in particular? Is it because she’s not Time Lord, and he thinks her not worth the effort?

“I’ve never done that with someone who isn’t – who isn’t from Gallifrey,” he whispers tightly. “I don’t know – ahem – I don’t know how.”

Her entire life, Leela’s first response to fear hasn’t been retreat; she’s always run roughshod over her nerves and charged into perilous situations knife-first. So in this moment, saturated with fear of Narvin’s rejection, she does what she’s always done: she rushes forward. “I know how,” she says, still firmly holding his hand to her cheek. “You need not worry for your safety, I will guide your steps.”

“It isn’t myself I’m worried about.” She hears him swallow, feels a quiver through his body.

The throbbing in her head crescendos, and a groan slips between her teeth. She doesn’t realize she’s said his name until he whispers “Leela” in reply, and she feels his fingertips against her forehead, cool and soothing. When he says “Contact,” the tremble in his voice as loud as the earthquake at Heartshaven.

In spite of her searing headache, and the fact that it has been a very long time since she opened herself up like this, Leela performs the rudimentary psychic preparation for joining with another mind. Her ability to control and partition her consciousness isn’t remotely as sophisticated as a Time Lord’s, her methods for presenting and withholding parts of herself crude by comparison, but she had a patient teacher and years of practice.

Narvin’s presence dawns on the edge of her awareness, dim and tentative compared to the blinding cacophony of her headache. She reaches for him, but she might as well be grasping a wisp of smoke. Squeezing his hand, she concentrates on the sensation of resting in his lap, hearing his heartsbeat, feeling his cool skin against her own. Her focus on these things is like a projector, bringing them to the forefront of their mental connection, giving him something to hold onto.

Her head throbs again, that tangle in her skull tightening like a noose on her consciousness.

Along with the pain comes an awareness of a weight in her lap, and hot skin against her fingertips. She seizes these sensations – the sensations Narvin has offered in exchange for her sensory experiences – and pulls them in, internalizes them, meshes them with her own. His thoughts stutter, hesitant in the face of her enthusiasm, but he only falters for an instant.

Her eyes flutter open. The tangle of pain in her skull has begun to recede, because Narvin has taken the burden of it into his own mind. The thread of it in her temple remains, but she doesn’t wince at the light anymore. Instead, she stares up at his face, at his closed eyes and intensely serious expression. He looks like he might be calculating the value of pi to its last digit, instead of sharing an intimate moment with her.

She offers up her amusement to him, along with the memories of resting in his arms at Heartshaven, and especially the last day – lying in his lap – and the sense of safety and pleasure she feels when she puts herself into his care.

His eyes pop open, and a tide of fear and shame wash over her, along with the word _Bellesconds_. She hears and feels the words all at once, but his mouth doesn’t move: _You remember._

“I do,” she replies aloud.

That shame intensifies and he begins to withdraw.

“Do you think I would be here with you, like this, if I did not trust you?” She closes her eyes again and breathes deep. “I knew the Time Lord you were then, and I see the Time Lord you are now. We have changed together, side by side, over the years. You are better – _we_ are better.”

A complex wave of emotions washes over her, and within an instant it recedes, contracting into a deeper recess of Narvin’s mind as he hides it away. A few tidepools remain behind, dotted with conflicting remnants of affection and admiration, discomfort and disbelief. Instead of his feelings, he offers her the sensation of her thumb stroking his hand, her silky hair between his fingers, and the hum of the air recycling units through his ears. She offers up her unshakeable trust, and her faith in him, and her pleasure in the fact that he’s here, helping her.

Her head stops spinning, and that tangled pain dwindles. In its wake, the weight of exhaustion presses down on her limbs like sandbags.

_Rest, Leela._

Secure in Narvin’s care, she does exactly that.

 

~~~~~~

 

The next few days pass in a pleasant haze of work (the usual kind of work, varying degrees of petty politics and intergalactic life-or-death) and Leela (the novel kind of Leela, spans spent indulging in the tender, languid joining of mouths and minds, until his lips are chapped and he’s exhausted enough to sleep for nearly as long as Leela does). For the first time in all his lives, he doesn’t spend a microspan longer that he has to in the office.

He’s lived a long time and seen vastly more than the majority of Time Lords have, but he’s never experienced anything like this growing intimacy with Leela. Everything about her is alien and intoxicating. He’s preoccupied with the way her human lips and tongue warm his flesh when they kiss – although physically things never progress past that, because she is still under strict surgeon’s supervision for her concussion. Their psychic intimacy is another thing entirely, and her wild, undisciplined consciousness thrills him when he knits together their thoughts and sensory experiences.

In spite of the fact that this joining could be dangerous, and puts her completely at his mercy, she never feels fear or hesitation. He knows, because her thoughts are tinted from her history with another Time Lord. Whatever his opinions about Andred when he was alive, Narvin is grateful that he was a gentle husband, who loved Leela and showed her the pleasure that could be had in this sort of communion.

Her unbridled trust is a wonder, for so many reasons. Narvin carefully partitions off the darker parts of his memory, locking them out of sight when they join minds. But Leela remembers his confession about the Bellesconds, the most unforgivable thing he’s ever done because he did it so blithely, and her admiration for him is undiminished. He hears her forgiveness, and feels it, and knows it in the deepest part of himself, because she shows him every time their minds come together. She forgives him, even when he cannot forgive himself; she admires the Time Lord he is today, and doesn’t judge the Time Lord he was then.

 _Admires_. Maybe that’s the correct word, or maybe it’s only a facet of Leela’s feelings. Narvin doesn’t let himself dwell on semantics, because if he puts a word to her emotions, then that word applies to his own as well, and the prospect is more than he knows how to bear.

He’s careful to avoid her quarters when anyone else is there, always visiting – or receiving her into his own flat – by the secret passageways. Even though it unsettles his stomach, he eats real food instead of his nutrition bars because it pleases her. Even though she probably acquired it in some Rassilon-forsaken stall in Low Town, he sits patiently while she slathers herbal balm on his chapped lips. He lets her lick his lips clean again moments later, and they kiss until they’re both dizzy and breathless. They discuss everything and nothing, and of course they argue. He diligently tries to impress upon her how incredibly illegal her knife collection is, how unbefitting for a CIA agent to keep such a thing. She laughs at first, and then threatens to demonstrate how cunning the biggest knife is, and eventually he decides to re-engage this battle at a more opportune time.

Even with regular visitors and correspondence to keep her occupied, Leela has been caged in the CIA housing block for too long, like an animal in a zoo. Narvin doesn’t consider the fact that their physical and psychic bonding is the only outlet she has for all of her restless energy.

At least, he doesn’t consider it until the day he comes to her flat, and finds it empty.

He reasons that she must be in his quarters instead – hopefully sleeping in his bed, ready for him to wake her up by joining her under the covers, kissing her cheeks and lips – but she isn’t anywhere to be found. She isn’t wandering the extradimensional corridors between their flats, and after thirteen spans he convinces himself that she must be in Romana’s rooms, collapsed and in distress. Romana hasn’t left her office in the CIA Tower for a full day, so he forces open the Coordinator’s quarters with his secret codes to rescue Leela.

She isn’t there either.

With Romana gone from her quarters, Narvin uses her APC access portal and his failsafe access ciphers – the ones he buried deep in the CIA’s security protocols, placed there for the inevitable day he was forced out of office – and tracks Leela’s whereabouts.

She was visited by Tutor Baraz, and then left the building and vanished from the Capitol streets within a few blocks. He calls up her medical records – which should be under multiple layers of privacy encryption, but certainly aren’t off-limits when he uses CIA personnel authority to check on her status as an agency operative. Baraz declared her medically fit and cleared her to leave the building, her healing miraculously quick thanks to her altered human DNA.

And apparently, leave Leela did.

Within a quarter span, Narvin walks into Romana’s CIA Tower office without knocking.

“Is it time for the meeting with Trave?” she asks, yawning behind her hand. She only spares a glance before returning her attention to the files on her desk screens. “I must have lost track of time.”

“No, we’ve got another four spans before the meeting. I was thinking about disturbance in Lethe Major Eleven, and the number of assets we’ve chosen to deal with it. I’d like to go over the assignment again.”

“We covered it twice already,” she says. “What did you overlook?”

“Leela is recuperating so quickly, I thought it could be a good inaugural assignment for her, on behalf of the Agency.”

Romana’s gaze cuts over to him, and then she stands up and walks to a crystal decanter on the opposite side of the room. Pouring a glass of wine, she lifts it toward him in offering. He shakes his head, so she keeps the glass for herself.

“You saw the report from Tutor Baraz,” she says, sitting down in a high-backed armchair to one side of the room, and gesturing at its identical twin.

Narvin sits, as he’s bid. He doesn’t bother denying it. “Of course.”

“You went to see her?”

“She isn’t there,” he says in his most blasé tone of voice, as if this piece of information is the least interesting thing he could possibly convey. “Stretching her legs after such a long confinement, no doubt.”

“She tends to do that, confinement or not.” Romana takes a sip of wine. “Before the Axis, she’d disappear from the Capitol for weeks at a time, especially during that business with Torvald. The chancellery guard could never find her, when I asked. I don’t suppose the CIA ever paid much attention to her movements in those days?”

The way she says _CIA_ makes it obvious that she doesn’t mean the CIA at all. “It’s always been our business to track alien elements, both on and off-planet. Of course the Agency paid attention. I’m sure there’s a file in the archives, recording all her comings and goings.” The file would lack huge chunks of data, because Leela has always been savvy enough to evade surveillance when she chooses. But Romana is right: he didn’t care enough, back then, to keep personal tabs on Leela past her viability as a threat.

“She’ll return when she chooses, and not a minute before.” Another sip of wine. “We’ll have to be careful, managing her as an agent, because she won’t be keen on taking orders. I don’t see the Lethe Major mission as a good fit. We’ll find something else more suited to her personality.” She pauses. “You’re worried about bringing her into the CIA fold?”

“She made her opinion about this situation perfectly clear,” he replies. “I’m assuming she did the same, with you.”

“Oh, I got an earful,” Romana says. “Two earfuls, actually. And then some.”

“I can only imagine.” He takes in the circles under her eyes, and her rumpled uniform. “You look like you haven’t slept. You should go home and rest, before the meeting with Trave. I’ll manage things here.”

She yawns again and returns to her desk. “I have to finish this work, before the meeting. I’ll be fine.” Her screens activate again. “I’ve always found that the best thing to do until Leela returns is to keep busy. Maybe she’ll have shown up by tomorrow.”

Leela returns six days later, sunburnt, with a long shallow cut on one forearm, as healthy as a horse and happy as a clam. Narvin doesn’t know she’s back until Romana issues him a summons, and he walks into the Coordinator’s office to find Leela lounging in one of the high-backed chairs. One leg thrown over the armrest, she picks dirt from under her fingernails with the tip of her knife.

“I told you he’d be along,” Romana says, seated in the chair beside her. He’s obviously interrupted their conversation.

“Narvin!” She sits up straighter, her voice bright and full of pleasure, and pauses picking at her nails.

His stomach dives sideways as the rest of his body remains stock-still. Swallowing a week's worth of worried nerves and restless anticipation, he frowns - if he didn't swallow them, they'd spill out in a barrage of shouting. Physically and psychically, he can’t stand the fact that she’s on the opposite side of the room – he needs to touch her, more than anything else he’s needed in all his lives. A part of him whispers that he ought to fling himself across the room and pepper her with kisses; another part is annoyed enough, he briefly imagines flinging her out the window.

The first few days she was gone, he’d periodically stopped by her flat, and then resigned himself to monitoring the city and building surveillance for her return. The fact that she made it through the Citadel and into the CIA Tower without a single ping on his radar is impressive, and more than a little infuriating.

“Decided to rejoin civilization, have we?” he says dourly.

As she senses his mood, she sighs and her grin shifts into a smirk. Spreading her arms, she aims her knife vaguely in his direction. “There is no civilization in the universe more tiresome than that of the Time Lords. I see nothing has changed here in the Capitol, in my absence.”

The word _savage_ doesn’t even occur to Narvin, although in years past it would have been the first thing off his tongue. “And I see a stint among the Shobogans has improved your manners. You’re managing full sentences now.”

“Both of you, quit squabbling like time tots,” Romana says tiredly. “I was just telling Leela about the mission to Haxor, and how her particular set of skills would be valuable to the Haxorian Vizier. Would you care to join this briefing, or do you have other business to attend to?”

“I have other business, you may copy me on mission updates if you feel my input is necessary.” He turns to leave, thinks better of it, and pauses at the door. “The Haxorian mission launches tomorrow morning, does it not?”

“So Romana says,” Leela replies.

He nods. “Excellent.” Sweeping out of the door, his robe billowing in what is no doubt a majestic fashion, he maintains his composure until he gets to his own office and he’s completely alone. After notifying his assistant that he shouldn’t be disturbed, he meticulously, and with great force and feeling, straightens and tidies every stick of furniture in the room. He flings several particularly offensive data pads and decorative pillows down the trash incinerator. Afterward, he sits down and tackles paperwork with a vengeance, as if each report and requisition log is a personal insult to his time and station.

A while later, the door to his office buzzes open without warning.

“Lady Leela, he isn’t to be disturbed! You can’t –”

“I have very important business to discuss with the Deputy Coordinator,” Leela replies breezily, sweeping past his beleaguered assistant. “He will want to see me.”

Narvin sits up straight, frowning even as his entire being lights up, every particle of him oriented toward the alien invading his work space.

“It’s all right, let her in,” he snaps at his assistant. “But if it isn’t too much trouble, see if you can muster enough _baseline competence_ to perform even a _fraction_ of your duties. If anyone else gets past you, for any reason at all, I’ll have you in remedial administrative training and assigned to night shifts for the rest of the quarter. Understood?”

The assistant stutters a reply that sounds vaguely like “Yes, sir,” and the door buzzes closed.

Leela plops down in a chair in front of his desk, as if he has invited her to stay. “You look well. The universe has not fallen apart while I was gone?”

He wants to stalk out of his office, without giving her the satisfaction of a reply. In equal measure, he wants to lunge across the desk and kiss her, to pin her to that chair and bind their thoughts together and show her how, _yes_ , in fact, his universe has somewhat fallen apart while she was gone. He wants to grovel at her feet in the most debased manner imaginable, and beg her to never do such a thing again.

He settles for folding his hands on the black stone surface of his desk, instead.

“A fairly major incident in the Mutter’s Spiral, but it was taken care of. Commentator Croesus has chosen her successor on the evening vidcast. And how are your Shobogan friends?”

“They are well. We had three successful broakir hunts.” He hadn’t thought of her as being diminished during her recuperation, but now he sees how much confinement affected her. Reinvigorated from her stint outside the Capitol, Leela is practically glowing. She’s like wilderness and sunlight captured in a bottle, her white teeth and blue eyes mesmeric as she pins him with her attention. His mouth waters, his fingertips itching to stroke her skin, his ears aching to hear her speak his name.

“Animal sacrifice. Charming,” he says, managing something akin to dispassion.

“You did not miss me? I missed you.”

“Did you, indeed?” He flicks his fingers over his desk, activating his screens. “I really have quite a bit of work, if you’ll be so kind as to see yourself out.”

In a flash of movement, Leela bridges the distance between them – Narvin has no idea if she vaulted or circumvented the desk, but suddenly his chair spins sideways and she’s atop him, straddling his lap and kissing him with the same hunger he’s been unsuccessfully suppressing since he saw her in Romana’s office.

His lips open and he tastes her, greedy and desperate; his hands spread across her hips, fingers digging into her arse with the sort of force that will probably leave a mark. She hasn’t cleaned up since she returned from the Outlands, and she smells of dusty leather and sweat, and she tastes of copper and – perfectly, deliciously – like herself. When she finally says his name, he swallows the syllables, his entire body exhilarated and aching like he’s regenerating right here and now.

She finally gasps, “I missed you so much, Narvin, even more than I thought I would. We lived so far apart for so many years on that other Gallifrey, and it did not pain me so much as the last week. Is that not strange?”

“You could’ve done me the courtesy of saying something before you left.” He should be angry – he still is, probably – but right now Leela is very real and very much in his lap, and his marrow is buzzing, and the whole of his concentration is devoted to managing the hormones that are straining at his self-control, ready to flood his system.

“Did you not miss me even a little?” she breathes in between kisses. “Is it not sweeter, a reunion after being apart?”

“I was so busy with work, I hardly noticed you were gone,” he lies.

Her enthusiasm dwindles, her attentions slowing down. “Shall I really leave you to this work, then? I could go prepare for the mission to another world that Romana has tasked me with tomorrow.”

He stares into her golden-blue eyes, the tanned skin across her high cheekbones, and the pout on her bow-shaped lips, and says, “Maybe – maybe the work can wait.”

Leela takes his head in her hands and kisses the tip of his nose. “Good, because during the time I spent outside the Capitol, I remembered all the Sevateem mating traditions you must learn. For instance,” she kisses his mouth and shifts her body forward, legs opening, until she’s fully against his hips, “Tonight I intend to show you the ‘Dance of the Drunken Herons.’”

Her weight shifts just so, increasing the friction between them. His lips fall open and he sucks in a breath. His fingertips dig into her hips again, to control her movement, but she catches his forearms and pulls them away, holding them fast. Leaning closer, she nuzzles his beard and nips along his jaw, and continues, “After that, we shall attempt the ‘Warm Drink of the Elder Gods.’ This technique requires strength and flexibility, but I think you might manage it,” She shifts again, grinding against him, and catches his earlobe between her teeth. “If you work very hard and are a very, _very_ good Time Lord, then I shall allow you to attempt the ‘Plunder of the Forbidden Temple.’”

He swallows, and rasps, “All very quaintly poetic, I’m sure.”  

“I’m quite skilled in the traditions of my people, and I excel in this area especially.” She traces the shell of his ear with her tongue, and then brings her mouth to a spot on his neck, just above his collar. In a quick movement, she rises up just far enough to form a seal with her lips and sucks hard at his skin.

Narvin’s hips buck in surprise as he bites off a yelp, so it hisses between his teeth. “Leela!”

“This tradition is called ‘The Mark of the Intended,’” she giggles, drawing back to admire the pink circle she’s just created.

“These aren’t Sevateem traditions,” he growls, squirming without really trying to force her off his lap. “You’re making it up.”

She grins in delight. “You think I would speak falsehoods about my people to tease you?”

“You absolutely would.” Shifting his head to indicate the reddening mark on his neck, his tone ratchets up a note: “Is that – is that going to bruise?”

“I expect so,” Leela says, eyeing it with immense satisfaction. “Shall I try again, to make sure?”

“Certainly not,” he says, breaking free of her grip with a quick movement, and catching hold of one wrist. He squeezes just a little too hard, and she wiggles in delight. His gaze has shifted from startled to something sterner, and more predatory. “Time Lords do not appreciate being taken advantage of.”

“Do you speak for your people, or yourself?” she says, biting her lip. “Because I can think of at least sixteen ways to take advantage of you this very moment, all of which you would very much enjoy.” Smiling, she shifts back along his thighs, creating space between them. In a frighteningly dexterous movement, her free hand finds its way inside his robe, slipping beneath his undershirt, down the tender skin of his abdomen, and plunging inside his long shorts. “Shall I show you?”

Up to this point, Narvin has been carefully regulating his hormones and physiological responses to all this close contact with Leela. At least he’s attempting to, with a moderate amount of success. The moment her hot fingers close around his cock, all that regulation and control crack into a thousand pieces. His hearts pound, blood rushing and redistributing with such speed that it aches, and he grunts in surprise as he swells in her hand. She leans forward and kisses his mouth, inhaling his soft, needy moan, “ _Yes_ ,” as her grip tightens and her hand starts to move.

His office door isn’t secured. He’s late for an appointment with a Cardinal. He’s at work, at the heart of the agency that secures his people and his planet’s past, present and future. The authority and dignity of his position here at the CIA dictate that he should put a stop to this, immediately. He’d be justified in taking a TARDIS and crossing his own timeline, to prevent himself from being professionally compromised to this embarrassing degree.

All of that can go hang, he decides as his hips twitch in sync with her hand movements. He’d like to show off his impressive stamina, but his relative lack of experience in this body and the sheer number of years since he’s been with anyone aren’t working in his favor. Even in the confined space of his clothing, Leela’s warm fingers move deftly, and within a matter of microspans he’s forgotten about kissing altogether. His forehead presses against hers as increasingly desperate, increasingly inarticulate sounds spring from the back of his throat. His imagination has turned slave to his body’s overstimulated nerve endings, imagining her hand is the blazing, slick heat between her legs. She pumps faster, sucking his bottom lip in between her teeth and squeezing just so.

Everything inside of him contracts and then, in a trembling rush he expands, and the universe with him, and all of creation is a burst of colorful stars behind his eyelids. She presses her mouth against his, smothering his euphoric sounds as he trembles and falls apart, every one of his joints as soft as crumbling sand. Eventually he forces himself to breathe again, eyes opening as he takes inventory of his body, assuring himself that everything’s still attached and in working order.

Leela pulls back and grins at him from where she’s perched on his knees, more smug than he’s ever seen her before. Without breaking eye contact, she draws her hand from his damp shorts, pausing only to swipe her palm clean on his undershirt. When she’s done, pearlescent beads of moisture still glisten on the inside of her wrist.

Without hesitation, she licks her skin clean. Before Narvin can decide how he feels about that (he feels spectacular about it, he realizes later, absolutely incredible), she kisses him again, her tongue pushing between his lips. She tastes human, and like Leela, and like _him_ , saltiness and hormones mixed with alien heat. His tongue slides along hers, chasing the last heady trace of this particular flavor, dizzy with the intimacy of it.

“Merciful Rassilon,” he gasps, when they finally break for air.

“Rassilon had nothing to do with _that_ ,” Leela replies.

“Merciful Leela, then,” he chuckles. He sweeps her hair back from her shoulder, thumb tracing her collarbone. “I missed you very much.”

“And yet you only admit it after I have been so kind to you?” she says, lifting an eyebrow and wiggling her fingers at him. “I think you did not miss me at all, only my skilled touch.”

“Will you believe me if I show you?”

She leans forward, resting her forehead against his. “Yes, show me.”

“Contact,” he whispers, and he opens his memories of the last ten days. He doesn’t hold any of it back, he lays it all bare for her to experience: first, his few moments of pleasure – sub-coordinator Hellena’s successful mission report, and a clever political maneuver with the Inner Council that ousted Cardinal Wibamar from favor. Then he shares the ache he felt as he tried to sleep alone at night, shivering in a cold bed; and the hours of work and distraction, stiff and exhausted at his desk; and the petty fury when he imagined all the ways she might be hurt or injured, and decided he hated her fragile human body and the fact that she would inevitably die before he did. How his powerlessness ate at him, how he couldn’t bear the fact that he couldn’t find her, or protect her, or keep her safe. How his entire week was saturated in the sheer, overwhelming sense of being bereft, in every sense.

He receives her memories in return – a few nights spent in Low Town with friends, and a few more with the Outsiders. Surprisingly, three different chancellery guards who came to visit, Time Lords she has known since she first came to live on Gallifrey, who ventured outside the Citadel to hunt with her in the Outlands. She hides their faces from Narvin, and he respects her reasons for doing so even if he can guess at their identities. He feels the sun on Leela’s skin, warm and invigorating; he feels the hot blood of a dead broakir running over her hands and forearms as she hangs and guts it. He knows the tickle of red grass on her bare legs as she napped in the sun and dreamt of him, and hears the questions of the Shobogans who teased her about her faraway thoughts and the fact that she was as aloof as a Time Lord.

He aches to kiss her again, to lay her on his desk and watch her auburn hair spread across its black surface, to repay her attentions with his own – her knees over his shoulders as he buries his face between her legs, and then his thrusting hips between her thighs, and suddenly every salacious thought he’s ever had about Leela comes springing forward. She gasps, gripping his shoulder to steady herself, because it’s too much, too fast. He’s kept this desire on such a short, tight leash for so long, it has grown wild in its confinement.

He cuts off their telepathic link, and she sways backward, dizzy from the hastily snapped connection. Narvin holds her by the ribcage, steadying her.

“I shouldn’t have done that. Careless of me. Are you alright?”

She blinks, eyes coming into focus. “You desired me when we were fighting Pandora? Before the Axis?” she asks.

Of course, of all the things she might have fixated on, this is what she chooses.

“It’s hardly material.”

“Oh but it is, Narvin! You thought me so far beneath you, and yet you desired me at the same time,” she replies, grinning. He nudges her off his lap, and she stands up and backs away from his side of the desk. He stands as well, refastening his robe, trying to smooth out his clothing and his composure at the same time. “I had no idea you were capable of such wicked thoughts! Do you really wish for me to bind you with rope and insert a –”

“This really isn’t the time,” he snaps, his desperation increasing as this situation slips even further from his control. It’s one thing for him to have these sorts of feelings and encounters with Leela in their private quarters, and another thing entirely when it bleeds over into his professional space. While he might allow her to spend the night in his bedroom, he won’t let her turn his workplace into a hormone-soaked den of alien sex, no matter how many days she’s been gone and how much he’s missed her.

Or he could follow her around the desk, push her down onto the couch, and shut her up properly. He’s struggling to siphon the deluge of oxytocin and vasopressin overwhelming his system, and no matter how inappropriate it might be here in his office, his impulse to repay her hand-delivered gesture in kind grows more tempting by the nanospan.

“No, indeed, not in your office. You imagined me tying you up and doing those things in the Panopticon!” she counters gleefully as she backs away, luring him along. “I have many wicked thoughts about you, as well. Shall I describe them?”

The speaker on his desk dings, and his assistant says, “Deputy Coordinator, Cardinal Tamadan is here for your meeting.”

The interruption snaps him into focus, enough so that he manages a stern look at Leela. “As I said, this isn’t the time.”

“You would rather spend the next hour in a boring meeting with a Cardinal? Truly?” she sighs. “Pity.”

He glances at himself, straightening his tabard. Even with their simpler cut, CIA robes are notoriously heavy, and he’s grateful that the thick fabric conceals the mess that Leela left behind. Smoothing his beard, he tugs up his collar, to hide the red mark she made. She nibbles her thumbnail, watching this process in unvarnished delight, and the glimmer in her eye makes him feel like he’s standing before her wearing nothing at all.

“You look very distinguished,” she announces when he’s finished.

His cheeks warm, and the spot on his neck stings, and he presses the button on his desk that controls the office door. It buzzes aside, admitting Cardinal Tamadan along with her two aides.

“Lady Leela, we’ll finish our discussion later,” Narvin says, gesturing toward the exit. “I have some specific details I’d like to go over with you, during our next meeting.”

“I look forward to hearing your thoughts, Narvin,” she replies. After returning the Cardinal’s brief nod of greeding, she vanishes out the door.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Cliff's notes on Gallifrey canon up to this point](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/36608517), if you'd like.

Preparing for a CIA mission takes far longer than Leela anticipates, her afternoon occupied by boring technical and cultural briefings and, for a single blessedly entertaining span, weapon requisitions. By the time she returns to her quarters, Pazithi Gallifreya has crested over Solace’s peak, turning the sky burnt umber. She expects to find her rooms dark and cold, the byproduct of a week’s worth of abandonment, but instead every light blazes and the scent of tea fills the air.

Narvin sits at her dining table, working on two different data pads and drinking a hot cuppa.

The sight of him here, waiting, sends a flutter from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head. He hadn’t hidden his anger earlier today, he was obviously upset with her for leaving the Capitol; this gesture is a humble one, freely given evidence of his forgiveness and desire for her company.

This gesture is also very convenient for Leela’s purposes, because she’s spent the day formulating exquisitely detailed plans for getting Narvin naked and having her way with him, and finding him here means she doesn’t have to track him down. He’s delivered himself up on a platter, as if he’s fully aware of the perpetual effect he has on her, these days. She’s always preoccupied with the lines of his shoulders, how surprisingly broad they are even when he isn’t wearing his padded tabard. Those rare occasions when he doesn’t wear a robe over his trousers – his tight field uniform, or the modified CIA robe with long tails – she finds herself staring at his arse at the most inopportune moments. During her recuperation, when she rested her head in his lap, she played with his long fingers and stroked his strong hands and imagined all the ways they might be put to use.

The two of them have spent so many nights with their limbs and consciousnesses tangled together, Leela’s self-restraint has been hanging on by a thread. She contented herself with kissing his mouth, and imagining the bare contours of his body beneath the thin layers of clothing between them. She scarcely resisted the urge to unbridle her desire when he linked their minds, knowing how much it would tax his self-control to see the graphic things she imagined when she was alone and slipped her fingers between her thighs to alleviate her raging lust. She kept those thoughts hidden, because if either one of them broke and gave in, her recuperation would have been at risk; and the slower her recuperation, the longer she'd have to wait to be satisfied.

Narvin is proud, quarrelsome, and irritatingly clever, and for some reason Leela cannot logically explain he is one of the sexiest creatures she’s ever encountered, in all her years and all her travels. Now that her recuperation has finished, she is going to fuck him until neither one of them has the strength to stand up anymore.

Blithely unaware of her plans for this evening, he takes a sip of tea when she comes in. “The groceries in your lockers had gone bad, so I restocked them,” he says, waving vaguely toward the kitchen cubby.

Leela floats to the table, pretending that the sight of him waiting for her hasn’t melted every one of her internal organs, and that his thoughtful gesture of provision hasn’t twigged a primal urge to declare her eternal loyalty. “Will you eat with me?”

He turns off his screens. “I’d like that.”

They share food from a single plate, boots bumping under the table and hands brushing over the meal. They chat, Narvin casually but persistently asking about her health during the week she spent outside of the Capitol, because he’s obviously braced for her to collapse with a migraine again. She assures him she hasn’t had a headache in days.  

Finally Leela stands up and gestures to her mud-caked boots and dirty hair. “I should clean up.”

“Oh. Yes, of course. You’ll want me to -” in an instant, the outline of several words form on his lips _(leave, wait)_ and he settles for “- give you some privacy.”

Leela snorts in laughter and seizes his hand. “I recall creating a mess earlier. I hoped you had not cleaned up yet, either, and kept a reminder of me with you throughout the day.”

He sputters, blinking rapidly as he processes this literally and figuratively filthy thought. “I changed clothes.”

“Oh,” she says, words tinged with disappointment as she surveys him from head to toe. He unconsciously lifts his free hand to his collar, tugging it up to hide the red welt she left on his neck. “I shall have to make another mess, then. Come along.”

Without waiting for an answer, she leads him into her bedroom’s ensuite. The lights flicker on as they enter the moderately sized lavatory. A counter with two sinks and a long mirror occupies one wall, and a sonic cleaning unit occupies the opposite corner of the room.

Leela leans against the doorframe, pulling off her mud-caked boots and tossing them into a corner. Narvin watches, and then copies her movements, toeing off his shoes and kicking them out of the way. His grey-blue eyes are wide, his lips parted slightly.

Walking to him on bare feet, she slides a hand up his chest. “May I help you with your robe?”

He nods. She begins with his tabard, unfastening the black material and using both hands to slide it off the back of his shoulders. Then she fiddles with the catch on his robe, at his neck, his adam’s apple bobbing against her knuckles as he swallows.

In short order, the robe drops to the floor, joining the tabard behind him. He stands in his undershirt and black trousers. Before she can proceed, he gently seizes her cowl and lifts it over her head, dropping it to the side. She grins up at him, watching the delight on his face as he takes in the sight of her tanned arms, and the low dip of her tank top across her chest. His index finger traces the line of her collarbone, and he leans down to kiss her.

Leela sucks his bottom lip into her mouth, and he tilts his head and opens his lips against hers. His hands settle at her hips, thumbs slipping into the space between her tank top and leather trousers, finding skin. They rub slow circles against her waist, the movement echoed by his tongue in her mouth.

She pauses long enough to pull his shirt off over his head. Narvin tries to kiss her again – a nervous movement, as if he’s trying to stop her from noticing the fact that he’s bare-chested.

His distraction doesn’t work; the sight of him elicits a gasp of delight from Leela. She traces the wide, jagged scars on his chest, his hair tickling her fingertips, and then leans forward to press her lips to the center of each – one from his right shoulder to his left pectoral muscle, and another down his sternum.

“These were from the Vampire Lord,” she says, because she helped dress these wounds on the Axis, after the three of them returned from that Gallifrey of eternal night. She reaches down to touch the ripple of skin along the left side of his waist. “And this was from the bomb in the Artron Forum?”

“No, it was from the Free Time bomb in the Panopticon,” he replies. “Before the civil war.”

“I had forgotten about your habit of standing near explosive devices,” she teases, and then hums her approval. “Such handsome souvenirs!”

He gazes down at her in wonder, with the rapture of a boy discovering the stars for the first time. “Have you forgotten this one?” He pivots his shoulders, bringing his right one down for her inspection. “This happened the third time you drew your knife on me.”

She trails her fingernails from his waist to his shoulder and rubs the two inch moon-shaped mark with the pad of her thumb. “The final time I drew my blade on you, and the only time I didn’t intend to take your life.”

“You saved me, that time.”

“Darkel’s bug-bomb was no match for me, even when I was blind.” Rising onto her toes, she presses her lips to the half-moon scar. “Shall I show you a souvenir, from one of the times you saved my life?”

Without waiting for an answer, she pulls her tank top off by the hem, over her head. He swallows, eyes darting across her suddenly very bare skin. Leela has a half dozen scars on her torso, large and small and everything in between, but she lifts her left arm and traces a prominent circular scar at the top of her hip bone. “A fortnight after the three of us arrived on that other Gallifrey, the ex-slaves had no money and no resources, and so we stole broken machinery from the former masters to use in planting crops and building a city. I fell from a malfunctioning grain-harvester and onto a metal pole,” she says, staring up at him and biting her lip. “The wound was deep, and struck a vital organ – or so the nurse said. We had no surgeons, because none of the slaves had any such training, and I refused to return to the Capitol for treatment. But you had authorized aid shipments to Mancipia, and the surgical equipment and medicines in those boxes saved my life.”

Narvin’s eyebrows knit together and he reaches out to trace the scar, his fingertips touching hers. “I never knew. I had no idea.”

“You did not have your spies amongst my people then,” Leela says, quirking a half-smile at him. Turning her back, she displays a smooth finger-length scar between her shoulder blades. “This one was from the Gallifrey ruled by monkeys. I believe the blow that made this mark would have cut my spine, had you not intervened.”

He touches the scar, his skin cool against hers. She suppresses a shiver of anticipation.

“I don’t remember that – I intervened?”

“You fainted just as the monkey guard patrol came around the corner. The dramatic way you fell to the floor and flopped around in front of everyone, screaming in such a high-pitched manner, was a perfect distraction, giving me time to draw my weapon.”

He rolls his eyes, rubbing a hand across his face. “Of course you remember it like that.” He pokes at the scar again, then trails his fingers around her ribs, pulling her back against his chest by flattening his hands against her stomach. Leaning into him, she closes her eyes as he draws her hair out of the way and kisses her temple, and the shell of her ear, and the spot just below her earlobe. His voice is low, rumbling against her back: “You’ll also remember those simian Gallifreyans shot me with a poison dart a microspan earlier, and I’d been fighting the fatal effect valiantly the whole time?”

“The fact that we were being pursued did not hinder your courageous complaining, not from the moment the dart hit you to the moment you fainted,” she replies.

“I wasn’t a coward, and I never left you or Romana, or ran from a fight on any of the Axis Gallifreys,” he growls, teeth scraping the soft skin where her neck meets her shoulder, his hands sliding up her chest to brush across her bare breasts. Her nipples draw into hard peaks as his palms, and then his fingers, move in slow circles across the exposed flesh. Arching her back a little, she brings her arms up behind his head, encouraging his attentions.

“And I wasn’t a savage, even though you said those monkeys were my people,” she retorts, without any real vitriol.

“I was wrong to ever call you such things,” he murmurs into her skin, a surprising amount of feeling behind the words.

She curls her fingers around his neck, tipping her head back onto his shoulder so her cheek rests against his. “You are the bravest man I know.”

In spite of Narvin’s cool skin, her chest is suffused with heat, her lungs tight with anticipation. A matching warmth has lit low in her belly, and between her legs, and she imagines his long, clever fingers slipping into her leather trousers. Pulling in a slow breath, he plucks her right arm from behind his head and kisses the back of her hand. Then he strokes the red scratch along her forearm.

“You haven’t seen to this,” he says, not asking, because it’s obvious. It’s sprinkled in purplish dirt, just like the rest of her. “We should wash it, so it doesn’t scar, too.”  

“Are you saying that I have tracked a desert’s worth of dust into the Capitol, and you’re tired of touching it?”

He presses his lips to her hand again, with the attention of a vintner savoring a particularly rare bottle. “You’re human, and you taste of Gallifrey.” A pause, and another deep breath, as if he’s working himself up to say something. His beard tickles the soft spot beneath her ear, and he whispers so quietly she can hardly hear: “You taste like home.”

Leela turns in his arms, and finds his eyes closed, as if he cannot bring himself to see the results of this particularly profound declaration. On her tiptoes, she throws her arms around his shoulders and opens her mouth against his, kissing him so thoroughly that she forgets to breathe. When her lungs feel as though they’re about to burst, she releases his shoulders and lets her hands fall to the clasp on his trousers, instead.

He opens his eyes, and watches her face as she strips him of the remnants of his clothes. This afternoon in his office, Leela had been pleased at the heft of his cock in her hand, but having felt and not seen him was like having shaken a present without being able to peel back the wrapping and see what's inside. When the last few pieces of his uniform hit the floor, she makes a noise of delight and wraps her hand around him again, caressing experimentally. He closes his eyes, humming in pleasure, and as she continues her movement he returns the favor, pulling off her leather trousers, his hands and gaze tracing her lean curves, his desire for her on full, unabashed display. His fingers trail over her hip and down her belly, slipping into the auburn curls between her legs - an experimental gesture, gentle and exploratory. She shifts all her weight onto one leg and opens her thighs a little, pushing her hips forward into his touch, her grip tightening as she strokes him in response.

They stand like this, mapping terrain for a few long moments, until Leela pulls away to activate the shower. This cleansing unit is larger than the one in Narvin’s quarters, but still not necessarily intended for two bodies at once. They have just enough room to maneuver, but not enough to attempt anything particularly athletic. There isn’t a spray of liquid from a spigot, just a saturating steam propelled by ultrasonic vibrations – the constantly filtered water particles float through the air, agitate imperceptibly on the skin, and lift away anything that shouldn’t be there. Narvin automatically reaches for the button to inject soap into the steam – one of ten pre-programmed scents available – but Leela catches his hand and leans past him to retrieve a glass bottle from the corner.  

“From my journey outside the Capitol,” she explains, pouring the clear oil into her palm, rubbing her hands together, and then slathering it onto Narvin’s stomach and chest.

“Pandak’s ghost, that’s pungent,” he says, half-coughing and half-laughing as she dumps more into her hands and gets to work scrubbing it over his shoulders, then into his hair and beard. He lifts his chin to give her easier access, not offering any further objection as she massages his head, fingertips working the oil into his hair and scalp. As quickly as she applies it, the oil is captured and lifted away by the steam, leaving only the scent and clean skin behind.

“Sarlain and molten rushes, with a touch of swamp-mint,” Leela informs him, seizing his shoulders and turning him around so she can work the oil down his back. He rounds his spine into her touch, twitching when she reaches the ticklish dip above his hipbones. He stands stock-still as she cups his ass with both hands, and then proceeds over his hips and the scar there, kneading to her heart’s content.

Just as she begins to reach around his waist, fingers dancing down the trail of hair from his bellybutton toward his cock, he catches her wrists and pulls them away. “Not yet,” he murmurs, and she makes a disappointed noise, but doesn’t insist.

He takes his turn with the oil, silently and diligently massaging her fingers and the dirt encrusted in her nails, and the scrape on her arm, up her shoulders and through her hair, down her chest and back. She watches his face as he keeps his eyes on his task, his expression studious, as if he’s expecting her to deliver an evaluation of his work. When he steps closer to massage the oil into her hips and down her backside, she tips her head up and closes her eyes, expecting him to lean in for a kiss.

Instead, he pours more oil onto his hands and drops to one knee, taking his time down each leg, lifting her feet and cleansing her toes in the hot steam. Of all the things Leela ever imagined doing with Narvin, she’s never, not once in her wildest, most far-fetched fantasies, pictured him kneeling in front of her, cleaning her feet. She'd think the hot steam had gotten to her head or she was in the midst of a fever-dream, if his touch wasn't so undeniably real. His ministrations leave her entire body soft, passion constricting her lungs, the pulsing need between her legs growing more persistent with each swipe of his cool fingertips over her skin.

She slouches longingly against the wall, reeling with desire and too relaxed to do anything about it.

He places her second foot on the ground and pauses, staring up at her through his eyelashes. She watches as he leans into the thatch of auburn hair between her legs. Holding her gaze, he nuzzles her curls as he takes her hand, lacing their fingers together.

Leela understands, and agrees by silently mouthing: “Contact.”

Sometimes their psychic connection is deep and wide, like a river at full crest, sensory experience and memory and thoughts all rolling together like currents. Now, Narvin establishes the barest stream between them, a thin joining of sensory experience alone. He lifts one of her legs, bending her knee over his shoulder, and she leans her head back and closes her eyes.

She squeezes his hand as his tongue begins exploring. Her other hand comes to rest on the crown of his head, her hips twitching against his mouth. His beard tickles her thighs, the hair on his chin prickling the sensitive skin between her legs in a way that makes her instantly decide that she’ll never let him shave it again.

She has a vague realization that she’s licking the inside of her teeth at the exact same speed and pattern as Narvin’s tongue moves between her legs, but she has no idea whose will is the primary force, and whose is the echo. Each flick and touch and lapping motion is perfectly executed, because he knows exactly how she wants to be touched. He feels her desire as soon as she does, and moves accordingly. Leela experiences everything from her own body, and a portion from his body as well – it’s as if her own wet heat is thick in her mouth, her leg heavy across her own shoulder – she knows the desperate lust he’s containing as he focuses on pleasuring her, his determination to repay her afternoon visit to his office, his jittery delight at being her with her, like this.

As flawless as his technique is, it’s this last thought – his insecurity and determination to please her – that finally tips her over the edge. The slow, steady sensation that’s been building in her belly suddenly spills over, undulating across her body in concentric waves. Her tongue moves instinctively in sync with Narvin’s, his ministrations quickening as her pleasure crests, trying to hold her steady with his free hand. Her back arches as she cries out, her ears roaring with the beat of three hearts.

When she stops trembling and comes back to her own senses, she finds the psychic connection between them has dwindled to nothing. Immediately, she drops to her knees and seizes a startled Narvin by the face to kiss him. She wants to taste herself on his lips and in his beard, before the cursedly efficient steam carries the traces of her away. He makes a noise of surprise, and then opens his mouth so that his tongue can join hers. On their knees, they sway together, bodies pressed close.

Eventually he stands, bringing Leela along, and without opening his eyes he slaps the control panel to activate the drying mechanism. The shower draws out the steam and pumps in warm air instead, micro-currents drifting across both of them, pulling all traces of water away from their skin within seconds. Leela normally doesn’t enjoy this process – she feels parched afterward, even using her oils instead of the fake chemical soaps from the system – but this time she’s too distracted to notice.

They stumble from the lavatory and into Leela’s dim bedroom.

 

~~~~~~

 

All groping hands and hungry kisses, Leela pulls Narvin down into the piles of soft rugs and blankets. He follows her lead, still riding out a heady mix of lust and nerves: he’s already jumped off of this cliff, he can’t and doesn’t want to go back now. But he’s still falling and hasn’t seen the landing spot yet, he isn’t sure how he’s going to feel when this is over. He desperately wants this – wants _her_ – even as a very small part of him grapples with the reality that she’s alien. That fact doesn’t matter to him in the same way, anymore, but it still periodically twangs at the back of his mind, a vestige of the Time Lord he was when he first met her.

Some of the alien things about her are difficult to ignore. She’s so warm, all of her, her hand around his cock and her leg bent around his thigh and her body beneath him. His tongue still tingles from the heat between her legs, and he’s desperate to bury himself inside that warmth, even as his logical mind races to keep ahead of his body’s desires. In the rare moments of his life when Narvin has acted purely on instinct, everything seems to end in in temporal catastrophe, personal disaster, or intergalactic war. He always opts for preparation and research, when he can, followed by carefully managed action.

Naturally, he has prepared for this moment, Leela lying beneath him and groaning positively pornographic things into his ear. He’s had his share of experience with other Time Lords, but he’s also spent some time studying the anthropological and biological mating practices of humans; he has a firm grasp – figuratively speaking – on the mechanics. Her sexual biology is only marginally different than a Gallifreyan’s, after all, and judging by the pleasure he felt through their psychic connection and the epithets she shouted in the shower, she’s been happy with his efforts so far.

But perusing diagrams and reading scientific (and, on a handful of entirely accidental occasions, graphic and decidedly _unscientific_ ) accounts of how to pleasure a human woman is less visceral than experiencing it firsthand – the reality of Leela’s arms and legs wrapped around him, her positively scalding tongue licking its way down his neck, her deliciously vulgar promises breathed into his skin. The portion of his brain dedicated to approaching this situation logically, applying all his research to the problem, dwindles by the microspan; the roaringly ravenous part of him grows at an inverse proportion.

Even though they aren’t psychically joined, Leela seems to read his mind. With an expert grappling move, she flips him over and rolls on top of him at the same time. One hand in the center of his chest for balance, she seizes his cock in the other and lowers herself onto him. 

He thought he was prepared, that his fingers and tongue had collected enough data. He was wrong. Everything is slicker, and warmer, and tighter than he ever expected, and suddenly he can't remember how to inhale. She curls her fingernails through his chest hair, her lips forming the shape of his name.

Mercifully, she doesn’t start moving immediately. They stare at each other in utter stillness, breathlessly acclimating.

Narvin rests his hand atop hers, on his chest, and she rocks her hips, and the stillness fractures into movement, slow at first and steadily building in urgency. Hips thrusting, hands groping, tongues and teeth on skin; for the first time in ages, he loses track of time, of where he is, of everything except being here and now, with this woman. Eventually he rolls them over again and puts Leela onto her back – somewhat less elegant than her earlier maneuver, but he’s far past caring. Her auburn hair spreads out on the rug, her knees against his waist and heels against his ass, and the last vestige of his logical mind lets go. Instinct takes over: the only sounds in the universe are Leela’s groans of pleasure; the only scent is her clean body and their mingled hormones; the only sensation is his whole being falling apart into her, until he can’t remember where he stops and she starts.

When Narvin is spent, every single muscle soft with bliss and exhaustion, he collapses onto the carpet beside her, pulling her into an embrace. She murmurs his name in delight, like a term of endearment, and peppers his face with kisses.

Their entire relationship, from the first time they traded insults to this shared expression of affection, feels as if it has been predestined to reach this place. Any other timeline with any other outcome would have been shunted off onto the Axis as deviant, because reality couldn’t bear a version of Gallifrey where he didn’t end up in Leela’s arms. The depth and breadth of this feeling that suffuses him – this _happiness_ – is unlike anything he’s ever experienced, and he’s completely at a loss for words.

Leela has no such trouble. Grabbing a nearby blanket and pulling it across both of them, she settles her head on his shoulder, and gives back to him the declaration he made earlier, in the lavatory: “I like this. It feels like home.”

“It does.” He kisses her forehead. “It is.”

They drift off to sleep. When they wake up, they murmur quiet conversation in the dark, lips occasionally touching, but the ratio of words to kisses tips too far in the wrong direction and they end up arguing. This state of affairs is not unexpected, but arguing while naked is at least an invigorating change of pace.

Leela is being completely unreasonable, as usual. He tells her, in the least high-handed tone he can muster, “I meant what I said earlier this afternoon in my office. You have to give me warning next time, before you leave the Capitol. I don’t like it when you wander off and I haven’t any idea where you are, or what you’re up to.”

She rises onto an elbow and stares at him, her eyes glittering in the dark. “I am not accountable to you – you might have made me an agent of your CIA, but I am not your employee.”

“According to the applicable bureaucratic statutes associated with your employment status, that’s exactly what ‘being an operative’ means,” he replies, and then rushes on, “but that’s not the point. I’m not asking as the Deputy Coordinator of the CIA, I’m asking as … me.”

Mouth thinning into a flat line, Leela extracts herself from beneath the blanket and stalks out of the room.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

She pokes her head back through the door, eyes narrowed. “Are you upset because I did not ask permission before I left the room, Deputy Coordinator? Good!” She disappears again.

Narvin sputters, “Dammit, Leela!” She obviously isn’t listening, so he doesn’t call after her again, staring up at the dark ceiling instead. He certainly won’t give her the satisfaction of following her into the other room. At least not for ten microspans, minimum.

He makes it to six.

Wearing his long shorts, he marches out of the bedroom and finds her at the dining table, a veritable feast spread out in front of her. Sliced fruits and roasted flatbread, and several jellied items Narvin can’t identify, probably bacteria-filled concoctions from the Outsiders.

“You can’t eat naked,” he blurts out in surprise, momentarily sidetracked by this startling sight.

“Why not, Deputy Coordinator? Am I breaking another CIA rule?” she retorts, leaning back in her chair and folding one leg, heel resting on the chair seat so her knee is bent to her chest, exposing herself in his direction. Maintaining eye contact, she chooses a long, slender piece of sliced fruit, sucks it lengthwise between her lips, and pulls it out again. Then she bites it in half with a snap that makes Narvin twitch.

It’s the most inconveniently arousing thing anyone has ever done in his presence. Well, aside from the inconveniently arousing thing Leela did in his office that afternoon. She’s hitting these high-water marks far too frequently for his general comfort level.

“It’s not a rule.” He swallows, trying to collect himself, because he hasn’t won this argument yet. “It’s just not sanitary.”

“What exactly do you imagine I am doing with this food, that would make it unsuitable to eat?” she replies, lifting an eyebrow at him, and then studying the other long pieces of fruit on the tray in front of her. “Is this one of your wicked thoughts, that you refused to discuss in your office this afternoon?”

This moment is sliding off the rails in a spectacular fashion, and Narvin is half tempted to go along for the ride. His other half is determined to conduct a reasonable discussion before he removes his shorts again, to prove to himself he’s still capable of some self-control. He moves to sit across the table from Leela, which helps cut down on the visual distraction.

“I’m not trying to give you an order,” he says, jumping directly back into the conversation he started in the bedroom. “I care about what happens to you. I care about your well-being. You don’t have to tell me the details of where you’re going or what you’re doing. Just as a courtesy, let me know before you leave the Capitol for more than a day or so.”

“You care about my well-being?”

“You know I do,” he replies, in gentle earnest. The confession comes so naturally, Narvin blinks in surprise as the words hang in the air between them.

Leela’s stern gaze softens, the vestiges of a smile returning to her face. “I know. But I enjoy hearing you say such things aloud, sometimes. I care about your well-being also, Narvin.” She picks up a piece of bread and folds it in half, smashing it between her thumb and index finger before she takes a bite. “You will not spy on me when I leave. Or any time at all.”

“I will respect your privacy,” he replies, and mostly means it.

“Also I refuse to be your employee. Romana may ask me to help her with CIA missions, but I will not be at your beck and call.” Placing both feet on the ground and both elbows on the table, she leans forward in her chair and points a finger at him. “You are not … hmm, what is the word? Objective? Yes, that’s it. You cannot be objective, in the same way that tribal elders are not allowed to choose whether to send their own life-mates and children into battle. They become weak in these cases, thinking only of safety and not of the greater need.” She takes another bite of bread, chewing thoughtfully. “And I will not have your fat head grow even fatter, with delusions of my obedience. I have pledged my loyalty to no one except Romana.”

When Narvin and Romana retroactively initiated Leela into the CIA to save her life, Romana decided her combat and cultural experience warranted the rank of Special Agent with executive privileges – usually a title Time Lords attained only after several hundred years of service. He swallowed his objections at the time, because Leela was dying and he had far more important things on his mind than the minutiae of her job title. But the way she’s phrased this particular request – quaint Sevateem colloquialisms notwithstanding – conforms to the rights of her high rank, to refuse service to a superior officer because of insurmountable conflicting interests.

If he was still Coordinator, none of this would matter – he could overrule Leela at will. As Deputy Coordinator, if he tries to refuse, she’ll go over his head to Romana. Even if Leela isn’t aware that her request conforms to CIA protocol, Romana will be legally entitled to make this an official directive. He’d have to recuse himself from Leela’s CIA assignments – he wouldn’t be allowed to monitor her missions, or intervene when necessary to keep her safe.

If he agrees now, unofficially and without getting Romana involved, he’ll have more latitude in the days ahead.

“No direct orders. I won’t treat you like an employee,” he promises, and he truly means it. “As she always has done, Romana will guide you in such things.”

A full smile blossoms on Leela’s face, and she proffers a piece of ulanda fruit, as if sealing their bargain with a gift of food. Instead of reaching for it, he leans across the table and eats it from her hand, sucking the juice from her fingers. As he sits upright again, she says, “Perhaps I will allow you to order me around on occasion, but only in the bedroom, and only when I say so.” She picks up another piece of fruit and takes a bite. “But if you issue an order at any other time without my permission, I will show you how a Sevateem warrior deals with a fat-headed Time Lord.”

“In exchange, you promise to keep me informed if you plan to leave the Capitol.”

She nods. “Narvin, I should inform you that I plan to leave the Capitol in … mmm, four spans?”

“Three spans, forty-six microspans, and eighteen millispans,” he says. “Or thereabouts.”

With a laugh, she stands up from the table with a fruit tray. “I shall never grow accustomed to your people, and your ability to do that in your heads.”

“It’s part of the hard-wiring,” he replies, rising along with her. He would very much like to lose track of time again, to forget the fact that she’s leaving on a mission at daybreak, and she’ll probably be gone for days.

“I am still hungry,” she says, popping a piece of sliced fruit into her mouth, and then stopping to lift one to his lips, as well. He sucks it from her fingers, taking hold of her wrist and kissing her palm. She scratches his disheveled beard, drawing her thumb across his cheekbone.  “Come along. I would like to eat on the couch, this time.”

He should probably insist that Leela rest before her mission, but he’s feeling far too selfish for that. He’s feeling so selfish, in fact, that neither of them gets a wink of sleep before daybreak – not when she's kneeling in front of him on the couch; not when she spreads herself out on the dining table and decorates herself with fruit, for his consumption; not up against the bedroom wall when they're both too desperate to make it all the way back to her pile of carpets; and definitely not when they return to the sonic shower for an ineffectual attempt at cleaning up, before they each have to go to work. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A special thanks to [goingtothetardis](http://goingtothetardis.tumblr.com), who offered kind cheerleading and feedback on this chapter in particular. And as always, my eternal gratitude to [redtailedhawk90](http://redtailedhawk90.tumblr.com) for her invaluable beta reading services, and her generous giving of time and friendship.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Cliff's Notes for canon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/36608517), if you're into that kind of thing. And one more massive shout-out to [redtailedhawk90](http://redtailedhawk90.tumblr.com), whose wise feedback made this story so much stronger. <3

** Set during “Gallifrey Time War 1.2: Celestial Intervention” **

Narvin spends the following months in a perpetual state of exhausted, blissful confusion.

He’s never considered himself the sort of Time Lord who struggles with self-control or moderation, but if his time with Leela proves one thing, it’s that he doesn’t know himself nearly as well as he thought. Every day – and night – is a journey of discovery, exhilarating and terrifying and everything in between. He craves Leela’s company to an embarrassing degree, growing distracted at the most inopportune times, like in the middle of mission briefings or negotiations with the War Council. Leela’s athleticism, lack of inhibition, and alien libido mean that their sex life is prolific. He’s certain that not a single other living creature on Gallifrey could possibly be enjoying themselves as much as he is, at any given moment when they’re in bed together. In bed, or in the study, or the kitchen cubby, or the living or dining areas, in the extra-dimensional corridors between their quarters, a weapons closet on the CIA firing range – every private space they can feasibly maneuver in, inside the CIA housing block.

The process of scaffolding a functional, healthy relationship around their physical connection is even more baffling. He’s never had a particularly significant personal life, especially not one that infringed into his professional space in a way he couldn’t tightly control.

The idea of tightly controlling anything about Leela is objectively laughable. He might as well try to manage universal entropy.

Every relationship Narvin has ever had – personal and professional – is a perpetual power play, every interaction a bid for authority. Even with Romana this principle holds true. He argues with her, presenting alternative (and inevitably superior) suggestions to her opinions, but he always defers to her authority in the end, no matter his reservations. Romana decides and he protects her, managing the fallout when necessary, and never contradicting her in public. But Romana’s word is always final and absolute.

With Leela, he comes to realize his power plays are counterproductive. This relationship is one of equals, in every sense that matters. Compromise, in all its forms, becomes the norm. He agrees to let her keep up her hobby of marking him on the regular, leaving possessive little bruises with her mouth, as long as she keeps them in discreet locations; she agrees to help him with his hobby of building useless machines, gamely trying them when he needs another set of hands. They tend to reach these little compromises naturally, during the course of their days.

“I’d like a bottle of your bathing oil, to keep in my shower,” he says offhandedly one night, in the dark, once his hearts have stopped galloping and his body and mind are still floating on a blissful tide of post-coital hormones.

Leela’s fingers stop tracing the scars on his chest, but she doesn’t lift her head from his shoulder. “You have never liked the smell. Why would you want such a thing?”

He tips his head, touching his nose to her hair. “That isn’t true. I do like the smell.”

“You may like the way it smells it on me, but you prefer the chemical soap in the wall for yourself.” A pause, and then the sensation of her teeth delicately pressing into his chest. “Stop being a coward and say the thing you want to say, Narvin.”

With a put-upon sigh, he says, “I’d enjoy having some of your things here, with mine.”

No teeth this time, just lips and a faint trace of her tongue against his skin, and then she lifts her head to look at him, her hair a tangled shadow in the dark. “Is this because you discovered that I have already moved two of your spare CIA robes to the wardrobe in my quarters?”

“You did … did what?” It’s a testament to the effect she has on his general state of concentration, that he hasn’t noticed clothes missing from his closet.

“Yesterday.” He can just make out the flash of white teeth as she grins.

“You stole my robes?” he says, trying and failing to keep his voice from ratcheting into a higher register.

“I did not steal them. I only relocated them, for the nights you spend in my quarters,” she says, walking her index and middle finger up his chest. “So we can stay in bed a few microspans longer.”

When her walking fingers reach his neck, she skips up to drag her fingernails through his beard. This particular gesture always ignites a bevy of conflicted feelings in him. On the one hand, he isn’t a tame pig-bear to be scratched around the jowls by its owner and called pet names. On the other hand, _Rassilon’s ghost_ no one has ever touched him in this particular way before, much less with the regularity Leela does, and it feels bloody fantastic. The casual affection and intimacy of the gesture is so simple, so pleasantly animalistic, it plucks at strings he never knew he had inside him. In spite of himself, he stretches his neck to afford her easier access, and she giggles as she strokes his cheek. It’s as if she can read his thoughts clear as day, even though he cut off their mental link a while ago, just after their gratifying series of psychically shared orgasms.

Before he starts making embarrassing noises, he distracts her by maneuvering her onto her back and rolling atop her.

“I have also filled the top drawer in my kitchen cubby with the nutrition pills you like so much,” she says, tickling up and down his ribs. “Because my real food makes your stomach grumble as loudly as a Cardinal who cannot find their seat in the Panopticon.”

He brushes the tip of her nose with his own. “Bring your shower oil, and your hairbrush, and whatever else you’d like to my quarters.”

“Some of my knife collection, to display on your wall?”

“Whatever else you’d like, _except_ that,” he says. “How many times do I have to insist you stop threatening to bring illegal goods into my home?”

“At least four more times,” she teases, her expression turning sly. “Narvin, if you have illegal goods you should be arrested. Is it not the Gallifreyan custom to put criminals in restraints? If there were such alien weapons in your quarters, I might have to tie you up and bring you to justice.”

He goes completely still as he considers this offer, for long enough that Leela misunderstands his silence for offense. She opens her mouth to backtrack, but before she gets a word out, he says, “Really, I wouldn’t be the guilty party. If you think about it, I’d be the victim – given how determined you can be to have your way sometimes. You probably forced your way into my quarters and tied me up like the ruffian you are.”

“Ohh,” she says, low and sultry. “I am the criminal? Is that how it should go?”

Narvin swallows, and manages a husky, “Yes.” As thoroughly as he’s enjoyed the handful of times Leela has asked him to order her around in bed – especially the way she huffs the word “Coordinator” at him as she does his bidding – they haven’t gotten around to playing out this scenario of his.

“As you wish.” She wiggles out of from under him, collecting her clothes as she leaves the room without another word. He sits up, staring after her; a moment later the secret door in his study closes. He waits, but she doesn’t come back. He begins to wonder if he offended her. He eventually showers, and sits down to work in his living area, stifling the small voice whispering that he ought to go to her quarters and apologize and explain himself.

Just over an hour later, something cold and sharp presses against his throat from behind. Soft and predatory, Leela growls in his ear, “Don’t make a sound, Time Lord. I require your help, and unless you do exactly as I say, you will regret the day you came into existence.”

He turns ever-so slowly to discover her standing behind the couch, hair pulled back and a scarf tied across her face like a space bandit. She holds her knife – her legal daily-wear one, not an illicit blade from off-planet – and her eyes sparkle playfully.

Warmth churns in Narvin’s stomach, excitement mixed with genuine nerves; her blade tickles his adam's apple when he swallows. “I – ah – you shouldn’t be in here,” he says, words lilting at the end so it’s almost a question.

“I can be anywhere I like,” she replies, pulling the blade away and spinning it in her palm. “The only place you will be for the next span is at my mercy.” She drops a coil of rope into his lap, and his breath stutters and blood begins to redistribute at the very idea. It hasn’t occurred to him before, but Leela is exactly the sort to be extraordinarily skilled at tying knots.

As she towers above him with a weapon, brimming with confidence and control, it dawns on him that he would probably, with only moderate hesitation, die for her.

The compromises aren’t always this natural and easy. For instance, after several days of quarrelsome negotiation, Leela finally agrees to keep their relationship out of the public eye, her hands to herself outside of their quarters, and all of their interactions professional in the workplace; he agrees to stop pestering her about her illegal alien knives, and turn a blind eye to her sources of off-world contraband and her questionable supplies of tinctures and herbs. Another argument leads to her putting a mattress on the floor under her fluffy bedroom rugs, so he doesn’t wake up with a sore neck; and he stops compulsively cleaning and rearranging her furniture to make her quarters more orderly.

Narvin has always been put off by the idea of ceding his physical and emotional space to someone else. Dealing with another person’s mess, their noise, their needs; none of it appealed to him. But as time passes, and the ins-and-outs of their days become more mundane, he realizes that Leela’s company is the opposite of a burden. He is wholly himself when he is with her, and a room doesn’t feel quite normal unless she’s in it. Her noises become the background of his existence, as natural as the sound of his own breath, and when she’s gone the world is too quiet.

Every once in a while, as she has always done, Leela spends the night in Romana’s quarters. He and Leela never speak of it, because she hasn’t seen fit to initiate the conversation. As for Romana’s part, he can’t tell whether she’s genuinely unaware of his relationship with Leela or is simply ignoring it, but the topic never comes up, and he isn’t inclined to change this state of affairs.

Now and then, Leela and Narvin meet midday in the Artron Forum to take tea in the most businesslike manner he can maneuver, which usually involves sitting catty-corner at a six-person table and chatting while he reads from at least two separate datascreens. He likes spending time with her here, in this place where she first saved his life.

On this particular day, with his cup still steaming full, all of the vidscreens in the vicinity flicker to life with an urgent news alert of an assassination attempt on President Livia. The Forum crowd rises to its feet, he and Leela shuffling with them toward the biggest screen suspended between two nearby columns. Livia herself – still wide-eyed from her regeneration – addresses the viewers with a new voice, and a new face, and a new steely determinism.

In the throng, Leela stands behind him, peering over his shoulder at the screen. Silently and with remarkable subtlety, in the folds of his robe, she takes hold of his hand. Her fingers secretly twine with his, here in this most public of places, and she squeezes hard. He never knew he craved comfort until she gave it, and he clasps her hand in reply, not releasing her until she wiggles free and slips away through the crowd, no doubt to find Romana. She knows him better than he knows himself; she shares his loyalties and sense of duty.

He has never been more in love with her, than he is in this moment.

It doesn’t occur to him until later, during a full CIA personnel meeting where he’s organizing the investigative response to the assassination attempt, that he didn’t flinch at the idea of being in love with Leela. In fact, the thought was so natural, it didn’t strike him as strange at all.

“Deputy Coordinator, should we contact Castellan Kelldrix?” A short silence, as the dozen people seated around the conference table stare at him. “Deputy Coordinator, is something wrong?”

Narvin starts from his Leela-filled reverie, dragging his attention to the here and now. “Of course, aligning our investigators’ schedules with Castellan Kelldrix’s city patrols is essential. Sub-coordinator Hellena, take point.” The hand Leela squeezed is tingling, and he draws it into his lap, splaying his fingers so the joints ache. “Next, we need contain the publicity fallout.”

Admitting to himself that he’s in love, and admitting it to Leela, are two wholly different endeavors. After all, what’s the point of saying it when he’s picking up her boots from the floor and placing them tidily at the foot of the bed, so she can find them before work in the morning; or saying it when she comes back from an off-planet mission and he’s waiting for her with food and kisses; or saying it in the still, quiet darkness when they’re lying in each other’s arms, sweating and sated? Each of these gestures is an already a blaring expression of love, isn’t it?

At a certain point, Narvin decides Leela doesn’t want a granular update about the state of his emotions. His feelings are obvious, and speaking them aloud a needless formality. After all, she's prone to blurt out everything that passes through her mind at every opportunity, and she hasn’t seen fit to say anything to him, either. It might be uncomfortable for them both, if he said it and she didn’t say it back.

Honestly, it’s best for everyone if he doesn’t bother.

Once the War Council’s political clout – and budget – grow to an unwieldy size, in spite of his and Romana’s best efforts to contain it, Romana assigns Leela as the CIA’s official War Council liaison. Narvin doesn’t object to this state of affairs; in fact, it seems ideal. Firstly, Leela spends far less time in the CIA Tower doing distracting things like strutting down corridors with her hips swinging in that particular way, or yelling at him for his chronic tendency to over-plan her missions. Secondly, Leela spends far more time planetside, where he can regularly get his hands on her.

Everything about the arrangement is ideal, that is, until the CIA stumbles upon Project Revenant and the War Council takes Leela prisoner for an afternoon.

It was one thing when Leela left Gallifrey on missions and he worried about her dying at the hands (or tentacles, or antenna, or cilia) of dangerous aliens. But in this single afternoon he realizes that a primary threat isn’t beyond the transduction barriers; it’s here on his home planet. Not aliens, but Time Lords, and a threat far beyond the scale of what he and Romana dealt with before, when they protected her from a faction of the High Council bent on revoking her visa. Sure, the War Council has always been a _political_ threat, but the idea that the danger to Leela comes from his own people, and it has become more immediate, and more physical – it might intrude into the Capitol, into his office, into his _private quarters_ – this idea chills him to the core.

These pernicious, divisive roots push into the bedrock of Gallifrey, creating hairline fractures in the stability of everything Narvin has ever cared about, and everything he’s devoted his life to. Even as President Livia declares war on the Daleks, and the CIA is sidelined in favor of the War Council in the escalating conflict, he finds himself wondering if he’s simply out of his depth in dealing with the inevitable oncoming crises, with his own people and with the Daleks.

Maybe he’s too old, too set in his ways, too entrenched in this personality and this particular skin.

Livia and Trave’s recent regenerations have crafted them into people who are, for better or worse, more suited to dealing with war. Narvin can’t help but imagine what it might be like to face the battles ahead with a new body, new neurons, and a new personality. He could be someone better disposed to protect Gallifrey, and Leela and Romana.

This leads his thoughts down a parallel track, because if he had any regenerations left, there are plenty of ways he could re-mold himself to fit better into other areas of his life. Areas of his life he’s never given much thought to before, but that have recently come front and center.

Sitting on the balcony of Leela’s quarters, Narvin stares up at the Citadel dome. Weather rages outside – clouds and precipitation of some kind swirling madly around the protective shield, almost like the rest of Gallifrey is enclosed in a snowglobe, instead of its capital city. The weather inside the dome is perfectly calm and temperate, not a single degree higher or lower than usual. Skimmers and transports whizz by in the distance, the low consistent sound of existence inside this protected place.

“Narvin?”

He doesn’t turn. “I’m out here.”

Leela joins him, collapsing into the other empty chair with a deep sigh. “I thought Romana would never finish with her briefings. I have been listening to everyone talk for days.”

It has only been one day, of course, but he doesn’t correct her.

They sit side-by-side, studying the city in silence. Eventually, he realizes that Leela isn’t studying the city at all. She’s studying him.

“Oh no,” she murmurs. “You are thinking again.”

“I’m just tired,” he replies. It isn’t a lie.

“I have been in meetings all day, and I do not have the energy to tease out whatever big thoughts you have knocking around in your Time Lord head. You have been sulking ever since –”

“I have not been sulking!”

“– sulking ever since what happened in the Death Zone. So tell me what is troubling you, and then we shall eat dinner.”

He breathes a few times, collecting his thoughts and his nerves. “There was a time when I held out some hope that … that the High Council might see fit to grant me more regenerations.”

“Ah.” The sound from Leela is so soft, so understanding, that Narvin stops speaking altogether and swallows again, his jaw tightening as he tracks the movement of skimmers in the distance. She doesn’t say anything, just waits for him to finish.  

“It was a faint hope, but one I had nonetheless. But now that Livia has officially declared war and Project Revenant is practically sanctioned policy, there’s little reason for them to grant new regenerations to anyone at all, much less someone like me.”

“Someone like you?” Leela prods.

“In times like these, it’s one thing when someone from a high House comes knocking for a favor, or one of the Renegades who show up and save our civilization periodically – as much as we might publicly disavow Renegades, we know what useful tools they can be and how necessary they are to Gallifrey’s survival. But I’m a functionary at the CIA, not even the Coordinator any longer. I’m not from a notable House. I’m no one to be given such consideration.” He sucks in the perfectly-temperate air and hazards a glance at Leela from the corner of his eye. She has shifted her entire body to face him, sitting sideways in her chair and gazing at him with a look of such compassion that he snaps his attention back to the city instead. “They’ve never handed out regenerations lightly, and in our current war footing, it’ll be even less likely. I’m just the sort of Time Lord who wouldn’t merit the effort, I’d be better put through revenant procedures, anyway.”

“When it is your time to die, Narvin, it will be an honorable death,” Leela says, very seriously. “I will not allow them to defile you in such a way.”

Given the way things will probably go in this war, Leela won’t have much say in the matter. But he doesn’t tell her so, because it isn’t really that important.

“It isn’t only – it isn’t just –” He’s gotten this far, and these next thoughts have been pinballing around his head for so long, insecurities he’s tried to ignore or tamp down that just keep springing to life like the regenerations he’ll never have. The last few days have brought them into such sharp perspective, he can’t stifle them anymore, so he opens his mouth and keeps talking: “Lately when I stand for too long my left ankle aches, and my head has four more grey hairs now than it did when we returned from the Axis. And I have never been –” he clears his throat, his free hand twitching at his knee “— I have never been the sort of Time Lord who would regenerate on a whim, but we do sometimes have control over the outcome, if we’re careful. And if I still had the ability to change, I think about the ways I might be more suited for this war. Or I could be better suited for … for you. I could be stronger, and more athletic; I could have a more expressive personality, and be able to say everything you deserve to hear; I could be more handsome like –”

She moves with a predatory grace that makes him flinch, pulling her chair around to face him and drawing closer, so her knees bump his leg and her elbow touches his armrest. Seizing his face in her hands and turning him toward her, she studies him, drinking in the details. The pads of her thumbs brush across the crow’s feet beginning to form at the corners of his eyes, and trace the high set of his cheekbones above his beard, and the line of his jaw.

As she catalogues his every fault and flaw, her expression softens into a resolute affection. “Narvin, of all the faces you wore before this one, and even if you had a thousand others to offer me afterward, I want no other. This is the one I would grow old with.” One of her hands settles on his chest, between his two hearts. “I would never wish you to change, not in any way, not your face or your personality or anything else. This is the version of you I choose.”

His vision blurs with moisture and he blinks hard, forcing it back. A thousand words flutter in his chest, caught beneath her hand, so loud that surely she can hear them through her palm. The loudest of all those thousand words should be said, he imagines himself saying them, imagines that they might come easily off his tongue, imagines that she wants to hear them.

_I love you, Leela._

Without saying a word, Narvin cradles the back of her neck, pulling her face to his. Right here in full view of anyone who might happen to be zipping by in a skimmer or standing on a nearby balcony, he kisses her. Her tongue silently moves with his, speaking without sound, a whole conversation condensed into the air between their lungs.

The sounds of the Capitol turn to a buzz in his ears, his anxiety melting in the heat of her presence. Right now, he can pretend like the world – and the universe – isn’t falling apart.

_This is the version of you I choose._

 

~~~~~~

 

** Set sometime after “Gallifrey Time War 1.2: Soldier Obscura” **

The days become frantic, the corridors of the Capitol fraught with tension, the closed-door Security Council meetings grim with foreboding. Leela has never felt wholly at ease on Gallifrey, but these early months of the Time War prick her instinct, and leave her feeling like a mouse that wandered into a fox’s den.

Romana accepts her company, but doesn’t enter her confidence. Leela sees the cares that curve her friend’s back, and carve dark circles beneath her eyes; occasionally Romana will ask her advice, but more often she simply asks for favors. Leela always says yes, because she could never take Romana’s trust for granted, but sometimes she resents that the feeling doesn’t seem to be mutual.

And then there’s Narvin.

He takes to these stressful times like a fish to water, plotting and scheming and trying to out-think everyone else in the universe. He whispers to her in the small, dark hours of the night, of the disintegration of the Gallifrey he knew, and the disintegration of the universe beyond the transduction barriers. The different terms he uses to describe these two deaths speak volumes. She hears the meaning beneath his words, and it seems to her that he has simultaneously never been more alive, and never been more afraid of dying. His own death, the death of his civilization, the death of the things and people he has grown to rely on over the years.

Leela decides that Gallifrey’s true prospects must lie somewhere between Romana’s clench-jawed optimism and Narvin’s constructive pessimism, and so long as one or the other of them doesn’t tip into the wrong outlook, she will not believe the War is lost.

One evening she pins Narvin to her couch, shirtless and lying on his stomach, and straddles his hips. When her fingers dig into the knot-ridden muscles of his upper back, he bites off a yelp.

“Stop wiggling. I am tired of hearing you complain about your sore neck.”

“You lured me here under false pretenses,” he complains, muffled in the red cushions, his left cheek smashed as Leela digs an elbow into the spot where his spine meets his collarbone. His face scrunches in pain, but he doesn’t yelp again.

“You have a collection of stones in your back,” she says, switching again to knead with her hands. “Your posture is good, but you bear too much stress in your shoulders.”

The one eye she can see from this vantage point rolls up into his head, but she can’t tell whether he’s annoyed or in pain. Probably both. She continues working for a while, the silence punctuated only by his soft huffs of breath as she pushes on his ribcage and squeezes his muscles. Eventually his body begins to soften, and his scrunched nose gives way to a pleasantly dazed look.

“I have noticed something interesting these last few days,” Leela murmurs, keeping her tone soothing and her fingers moving.

“Mmpf?”

“Two agents have gone missing from the Agency. Mormus and Llewyn.” She shifts her attention to his other shoulder blade. “And a few weeks ago, there was another. Crasthel? Yes, that was her name.”

His answer is nonchalant, even as a new, subtle kind of tension fills his body: “People come and go. It’s the nature of the work we do, especially in these times.”

“They were not killed, or sent out on missions. You did not officially demote them, but you put them on long-term assignments to remote CIA facilities, in diminished roles.” His eye opens again, staring at the table on the other side of the room, his lips pressed together. “Did you do this because of me?”

Narvin’s ribs expand and contract a few times. “How did you get access to that kind of personnel information?”

“Mmm.” She leans down again on her left elbow, digging it into a particularly stubborn knot, and he grunts. “I will tell you my source of information, if you speak honestly of why you sent them away.”

“None of your actions had any bearing on their assignments,” he says as carefully as a politician at an election debate.

“That is not what I meant. Did you send them away because of the things they said about me?” Never to her face, of course, just in whispers loud enough for her to sometimes overhear – savage, Coordinator’s pet, witless monkey. Then there were the small, passive-aggressive gestures – moving her equipment, arranging briefing rooms so she had difficulty finding a chair, and other such childish sport. She confronted Crasthel, and then Llewyn, but she never spoke of their behavior to anyone else. She certainly never complained to Narvin. Their absence was a relief, but her suspicions about their reassignments has created a different sort of discomfort.

Narvin doesn’t answer, and she continues, “I do not want you to lash out at those who speak ill of me. I do not need your protection.”

“I wasn’t protecting you, I was protecting the Agency. You’re a better agent than all three of them put together, and their judgment was clearly compromised. Given their behavior, I couldn’t trust them with any vital work, so I gave them menial assignments they were fit for instead.”

“I was handling them in my own way. I am water dripping down a rock, carving a path where there was none. You were impatient, to throw away your agents. I did not need or want your interference,” she says, digging her knuckles into his shoulders again. “During war we cannot afford to lose allies. Punishing them so harshly was a mistake.”

He’s tense beneath her for a long while, even as she continues to battle his tight muscles.

“Maybe that was true, before,” he finally says. “When you weren’t the only human at the Agency.”

Leela eases up on his back, her touch gentling. “It was nice to have someone else on Gallifrey who understood what it is like to deal with Time Lord nonsense every day.” She doesn’t say Ace’s name, because she can’t bring herself to. Then again, Narvin doesn’t say it, either.

“I know you’ve been closer to her than the rest of us were. I didn’t realize it until she became an agent, but I liked that she was …” he exhales, eyebrows furrowing against the velvet cushion “… that you were both there to look out for each other.”

“I appreciate that you try to look out for me, Narvin. Even if it is sometimes misguided.” She stops kneading his muscles and drags her fingernails up and down his back instead. He makes a noise she’s never heard before, something in between a satisfied whimper and a gasp of delight. “But do not send any more of our allies away, whether they are my friends or not.”

“If you insist,” he mumbles into the couch, in glassy-eyed relaxation. Leela leans down and plants a kiss on the back of his neck, and he makes that new noise again. She leaves him on the couch, after tucking him in with a blanket, and lets him doze.

The next morning, Romana calls Leela into her office to brief her on the mission to find Finnian Valentine, and her reasons for sending the Master. When she asks Leela to supervise him, Leela scarcely hesitates before agreeing.

That same day, Narvin begins slipping personnel files in front of her at every opportunity. First he drags her into an alcove in the Panopticon. She’s thrilled for a split-second – she thinks he’s finally overcome his terror of public affection, and has come for a snog.

Instead of a titillating encounter, she gets a data stamp shoved under her nose. He wiggles it for good measure, to make sure she doesn’t miss it. “This is the personnel file for Senior Agent Brommel, a specialist at interrogation and data retrieval. Take a look at it, see what you think. If you request his inclusion on the mission two days from now, Romana will –”

“I am late for a meeting. Quit weaseling and say what you mean. Are you trying to take control of my mission?” She squints up at him, arms crossed, and decides that if he kisses her here in the Panopticon she’ll accept the data stamp.

“I’m not weaseling, and I’m not trying to take control,” he replies. “I’m trying to help.”

“As I said, I am late.” She steps sideways around him and leaves him alone in the alcove.

Dinner in his quarters brings more of the same, this time the picture of Senior Agent Brommel displayed on a data pad he slides across the table.

“Narvin, I asked for the bread, not this,” she sighs, pushing it back.

He slides the flat-bread across the table with his other hand, and flicks his thumb across the data pad so the personnel file changes. “Agent Verrell, whose record on off-planet missions is impeccable. She’s a crack shot, and specially trained in dealing with temporal anomalies. Which Finnian Valentine very well might be. She’d be an asset to any assignment, but especially this sort.”

Leela plucks the data pad from the table, glances at the file, and then tosses the device into an empty chair. “You are ruining my appetite.”

“If Romana thinks it necessary to send the Master on a mission, it’s only prudent to have as many sets of eyes on him as possible.”

“You imagine I will have difficulty handling him alone? That I have not had enough experience, and I do not know the risks I am taking? You think so little of me, after everything we’ve been through together, and everything I lived through with the Doctor before that?”

Narvin’s gaze darts to his plate – he’s been picking at his nutrition bar, not actually eating it – and he shakes his head. “That isn’t it.”

“Then you are merely worried, the same as you are every time I leave Gallifrey on a mission for Romana. And what has experience taught you? I come back safe every time, because I am _good_ at this.”

“You are good at this,” he replies, without hesitation. “But this feels … I don’t know. Different.”

“Different, how?” She pauses, studying his face. “Is your instinct telling you something, Narvin?”

He snorts, leaning back in his chair. “No, nothing so …”

“Primitive?” she asks, arching an eyebrow.

“Nebulous.” Scrubbing a hand across his face, he says, “Agent Verrell is excellent in the field. You would be in command, I’ll make sure she doesn’t question a single order. Or if you’d prefer, I could spare Agent Karla. There’s no one more reliable at the CIA than Agent Karla.”

“Romana does not think I need an assistant. I trust her judgment. Do you not trust her judgment, as well?”

“I trust her judgment, but I don’t necessarily trust her optimism.”

Leela crams bread into her mouth and chews contemplatively, taking her time as he squirms in a mild desperation that she doesn’t entirely understand. She has no misgivings about the mission, or Romana’s request that she handle it alone. Romana’s propensity to trust has contracted over the last few months, as the war loomed into inevitability, and Leela understands the need for discretion, especially in this case. Romana has expressed concern about spies in the Capitol, and if there’s even a remote chance of spies inside the CIA, then pulling in anyone for this mission besides Narvin and Leela could be risky. Not to mention the risk of bringing anyone into the Master’s presence, unprepared. His skills of hypnotism and manipulation could break practically anyone’s will.

She considers asking Narvin to accompany her. He has proven himself useful in tight circumstances, but he might also prove to be a distraction – her feelings for him, and her concern for his welfare, might warp her judgment. And if anyone could twist Narvin and his neuroses around their little finger, it would be the Master. The risks of this scenario far outweigh the benefits, so she doesn’t even bring it up.

Chasing down the bread with a sip of water, Leela nudges Narvin’s foot under the table, and takes his hand. “I trust Romana and my own experiences. But if you are truly so concerned, then I will maintain regular communication with Gallifrey during the mission.”

He brightens a fraction. “You could check in at regular intervals, with updates on your progress.”

“But I will not check in with you, because you are not my commanding officer.”

“Of course, of course. The ops team will handle that,” he agrees quickly, waving a hand.

“And you will not be in charge of this ops team.”

“No. Romana can run point, if you’d prefer.”

She tips her chin up in assent. “Very good. You are satisfied with this arrangement?”

“Satisfied enough for now,” he replies. Leela can see that he’d obviously prefer to swaddle her in blankets and tuck her into a pocket dimension, his misgivings about this mission are so strong, but he’s willing to settle for this safety measure instead. His mouth moves a few times, as if he’s working up the momentum to get something else out, and he eventually manages, “Leela, I ... ah. It’s very important that you’re safe.”

“I understand your true meaning, Narvin.”

A strange sort of hope – or maybe relief – breaks over his face. “You do?”

He means he’s anxious, and having a difficult time coming to terms with her humanity and her single life. She doesn’t embarrass him by saying it aloud, though. Instead, she kisses him and then pulls out a pair of ginger beers from his cold storage locker – stashed there a while ago, for just such an occasion. They cuddle on the couch, him reading while she watches the Public Register Video.

Leela doesn’t stay awake long enough to find out if the ginger helps him relax. She ends up asleep with her head against his shoulder, and accidentally wakes herself up by snoring too loud. For some reason she can’t fathom, Narvin seems charmed and amused as he guides her into his bedroom and helps her into bed, pulling off her boots and tucking her in before he disappears into the lavatory. She falls asleep as the sonic shower hums through the wall.

Briefings and requisitions always fill the day before Leela’s missions, and this one proves no different. She stops by Romana’s office before leaving the CIA Tower in the evening, and finds her arguing with Narvin – also no different than usual. This time, however, their words stop short when Leela enters the room, and Narvin’s nostrils flare as he stares at the wall past her shoulder, instead of looking at her directly.

“That’s my final word, Deputy Coordinator,” Romana says sharply, biting off the last syllable. “You’re dismissed.”

Eyes still not making contact with either woman, Narvin gives a nod crisp enough to put a chancellery guardsman to shame and leaves.

“What was that about?” Leela asks, leaning back to watch him stalk out of the Coordinator’s reception room.

Romana sighs. “The incident with the Dalek scout near Polarfrey put him on edge, and he’s jumping at shadows, that’s all. You know how worked up he gets, sometimes.”

“Mmm.” Narvin turns a corner without looking back, disappearing from sight. Leela steps fully into Romana’s office and the door slides shut behind her. “I came to see if you had any final intelligence for my trip tomorrow, before I retire for the evening.”

“Ah, yes. In fact, that was the other thing Narvin was here about – he’s spent some time with the Master today.” She gestures at a seat in front of her desk. “Have a seat, we should discuss what he learned.”

When Leela finally returns to her quarters, Narvin is waiting for her with several bags of food brought from her favorite food stalls in Mid Town, as is his usual custom the night before she leaves Gallifrey.

They eat, and they don’t even make it to the bedroom before he’s kissing her and pulling her clothes off. This, too, is their custom before her missions, but tonight he holds her so tight, she’s certain his fingers leave bruises. When he links their minds, stuttering the word “contact” in his eagerness, she feels his worry like a blanket of dust covering everything, motes of it drifting through his consciousness, illuminated by the sunlight of her presence. She shoves him onto the couch and straddles his lap, yanking his robe off with such force the fabric tears in her hands. He’s so distracted, he doesn’t seem to notice.

Through their mental link, his emotions aren’t as controlled and confined as usual. She gets glimpses of wild thoughts and feelings, things that terrify and overwhelm him before he hauls them back behind his mental shields, hiding them from view. He tries to keep her focused on the physical aspect of their joining instead, feeding her the sensation of his fingertips pushing into the warmth between her legs, his teeth scraping across her lips, his desperate urge to bury himself inside of her and lose himself completely.

For the first time with Narvin, his will sweeps over her like a powerful gust of wind, his needs threatening to engulf her own. His usually implacable control is tattered, but the things he craves – to fuck her, to consume her, to possess her in every sense of the word – aren’t dissimilar from her own desires, and the things she wants to do to him. The resonance as these feelings agitate back and forth between them amplifies her carnal instincts into something primal and frighteningly needy.

Before she realizes it, she’s dragged him onto the floor and pulled off the remains of his clothes. His restraint peeled away, he matches her ferocity. They map each others’ bodies with aggressive determination, revisiting hills and valleys and landmarks of the flesh with hands and mouths, teasing until their shared appetite becomes overwhelming. Leela finds herself rolling onto her back because he wants her there – she wants herself there – it doesn’t matter – he’s inside her, and they’re moving in tandem, his eyes open wide as he watches her beneath him. Her hand around the back of his neck, she pulls his mouth to her own, and a moment later he’s changing positions because she craves a different angle, and her desire is his, and their physical choreography is faultless.

Within microspans she’s contracting around him, trembling and suffused with heat; she’s emptying herself at the same time, hips clenched forward in release as Narvin comes simultaneously. Her fingernails scrabble across skin, like an animal clawing for purchase, and she feels the burning scrapes they leave behind. As one, they collapse together onto the floor, exhausted and satisfied.

She expects him to break their psychic connection, but instead he presses his forehead to hers, eyes closed. Their breathing synchronizes as he whispers (thinks?) her name, and kisses her lips. His thoughts and his body are soft in her embrace, and as their minds blur together, he draws her into a partition he’s always kept hidden before; with a jolt of delight she realizes he’s showing her their shared pasts and futures. Not one, but all of them – stretching into infinity, timelines laid out in his consciousness and vibrating like cosmic strings, bumping into each other and flickering in and out of existence as the web of time ebbs with established history, and flows around fixed points.

There are terrible timelines full of pain and horror, but he brushes those aside in favor of better days. She can’t follow the linear chronology of any particular thread, only seeing pasts and futures in glimmers, like iridescent insects flitting through darkness. In the past, a never-moment where he kissed her at Liaison Officer Hossack’s doomed peace conference; a never-moment where they stood together at a bonding ceremony in the Capitol on that other slaveholding Gallifrey; a never-moment where the two of them went Renegade with Romana, traveling across the universe in her TARDIS. Then there are future-moments, too numerous to count, of every variation and sound and color and texture. Narvin holding their child; the two of them grey-haired in a CIA briefing; him holding her hand, but wearing a different body; the two of them on a space station orbiting a gas giant; and on and on. In many of these future-moments they’re alongside Romana, and occasionally Ace or Brax. In a few, they are all five together.

She sees all these shining potentials at once, feels and hears them, and for a glorious instant the ecstasy of it is even more potent than the physical pleasure she felt a moment ago. But there are too many, and it’s too much, and as the chaos crowds her skull she makes a pained noise against his lips.

Narvin gently disentangles their thoughts, withdrawing behind his partitions and leaving her alone inside her own brain. In his embrace, she feels a pang of loneliness.

“Is it like that in your head, all the time?” she whispers as he shifts onto his side, his arm draped across her stomach.

“Not when I’m tying my shoelaces or writing an Agency memo, no. But if I use my training and concentrate, I can see it all, just like that.”

“There are so many of them, so many different futures,” she says, blinking at the white ceiling, because she can almost still see them, like an afterimage burned into her vision by a bright light.

His thumb strokes her hipbone, and he rests his head on her shoulder. “The potential timelines have been abnormal, since Livia declared war on the Daleks. I can feel them splitting and breaking sometimes, and there are far more of them than usual.”

“Which one is our true timeline?”

“I don’t know.”

He doesn’t know, and yet he chose to show her all the future-moments where they were together. As always, he never uses words to speak of things that matter, because saying a thing aloud gives it power, and that power frightens him.

He has changed much since she first met him, become a stronger and braver man, but still he cannot face these kind of feelings. And so Leela doesn’t speak of her love aloud, because he has always made clear that the words would bring him discomfort instead of joy. She does love him, though – in every way she can love someone, with the sort of determination that will carry on even when the initial burst of passion has ebbed. She has been in this sort of relationship before, and knows that after passion stops burning up her soul, love is a choice, and she has chosen Narvin. Maybe someday she’ll speak of that choice, whether he’s ready to hear it or not. But not tonight.

She does decide to speak of another choice, though. “You should not argue with Romana about my missions, like you did this afternoon. She only ever asks me go as a favor, she never gives me orders. The decision is always mine. Do not be angry with her, when you do not like what I decide.”

“Mmm.” He nuzzles against her shoulder. “Agent Karla could easily be ready to accompany you by daybre –”

“You promised not to speak like that again. I have made my choice, and you will not hold a grudge against Romana for it.” Perhaps she ought to have phrased that last bit as a request, but it’s too late now. Leela blinks at the ceiling, because the timeline afterimages have finally faded.

He makes a noncommittal noise. She kisses his forehead, and then stands up, offering him a hand. “Come along. I shall help you clean you up, and then we will rest.”

Even in the bedroom, they don’t get around to sleeping for a while. Eventually they drift off, but Leela wakes in the darkness to the sound of the secret door opening in her study, on the opposite side of the flat. She extracts herself from the pile of blankets and Time Lord on the floor, and seizes the first piece of clothing she finds as she leaves the bedroom.

Romana shuffles through her living area, shoulders slumped and dark circles shadowing her eyes. “I couldn’t rest,” she says, stating the obvious. Not just tonight, but probably for days.

Leela is usually the one who goes to Romana’s rooms, when she craves comfort or senses the same need from her friend. She can count on one hand the number of times Romana has ever come to her like this, mussed hair and wrinkled house dress and all – she must be desperate, indeed. The burden of responsibility has been heavy these last months, and everything appears to have caught up to her at once. Taking Romana’s hand, Leela pulls her close and brushes her hair back. “You look it.”

She seems to register Leela’s clothes for the first time, her eyebrows drawing together as she surveys the obviously oversized CIA robe. “What in Omega’s name are you wearing?”

Leela turns, still holding onto her friend, and tugs her toward the bedroom. “Come in. We were sleeping. You may join us.”

“Oh! Oh, I see.” Romana’s tone indicates she has known perfectly well what's going on between Leela and Narvin, conceptually speaking, but wasn’t prepared to encounter proof of it tonight. She tries to backpedal, physically and verbally: “I shouldn’t intrude –”

“Your company is never an intrusion,” Leela replies, inexorably towing her forward.

Narvin sits in the pile of rugs and pillows, blinking sleepily as alarm dawns on his face. Wearing only blankets, bare-chested, he casts about for clothing and only finds Leela’s leather dress. With a noise, he pulls the blanket up to his chin, crossing his arms to hold it in place. Belatedly, he runs a hand down his disheveled beard to smooth it out, as if he’s found himself called into the Coordinator’s office for a performance review.

Romana stops in the doorway, surveying the scene with an arched eyebrow. She seems too exhausted to summon the will to leave, and instead defaults to that most fundamental state of Time Lord existence: polite detachment. As if greeting him at a formal event in the Panopticon, she says, “Good evening, Narvin.”

“Romana,” he replies, mirroring her tone of academic indifference. His face has gone bright pink, however, the blush so intense it spreads across his bare shoulders.

“Romana cannot sleep, so she has come to join us.” Leela tows her inside and sits beside Narvin, patting the empty spot next to her. There’s no point in trying to talk about what’s happening, Leela has decided, because these two people who mean so much to her are both terrible at saying what they mean, or saying anything that matters at all. The conversation would devolve into sputtering and half-muttered sentences, and she’s too sleepy to deal with them, and their Time Lord emotional shortcomings, right now.

Narvin begins gathering the blanket so he can stand up. “I’ll see you both at the final briefing in the mor—”

“Hush, Narvin,” Leela murmurs, stroking his shoulder like she would a startled animal's. She gestures again for Romana to join them. “Tomorrow will be busy, and I cannot cope with the Master when I have not slept. Everyone settle down, so I can rest.”

Romana’s second eyebrow has joined her first, halfway up her forehead, but she shrugs and flops down onto the rug beside Leela. Blond hair spilling across a pillow, she wiggles to settle herself in and tucks one hand behind her head, elbow sticking out. “If he snores louder than you do, Leela, I’ll have to insist that he leaves.”

“He snores,” Leela replies, settling down to rest her head on her friend’s arm. “But not louder than me.”

“I do not snore,” Narvin protests faintly, still trying to find his bearings. Leela reaches out, waving her fingers, until he takes her hand so she can tug him closer. He finally succumbs, lying on his back with his arm against her shoulder blade.

Leela closes her eyes, and lets out a profoundly contented sigh. She misses the look that passes between Romana and Narvin, with its dozens of acknowledgements and concessions, all unspoken but understood. A while later Leela stirs, and finds that while she's still cuddled against Romana, Narvin has curled himself against her back with his arm draped across her ribs, sound asleep. Neatly sandwiched between them, she has never felt more at home anywhere in the universe. 

In the morning, she wakes to the sound of the two of them conversing in the other room. They don’t seem to be arguing, so she closes her eyes and listens. They discuss her mission to find Finnian Valentine, of contingency plans and supply requisitions; they speak of the Security Council and President Livia’s machinations. The conversation turns to Leela, in whispers so quiet she can’t make out their words, even with her enhanced hearing.

Eventually she joins them, still wearing Narvin’s spare oversized robe. They’re both fully dressed, as if they went to their own quarters to change and then came back to spend the morning with her. Leela pulls food from her kitchen and sets out a tray, and they breakfast together before leaving for the CIA Tower, and before Leela steps into the Master’s TARDIS.

 

~~~~~~

 

** Set just after “Gallifrey Time War 1.3: The Devil You Know”   **

During her mission with the Master, Leela is scheduled to check in at regular intervals. The first check-in, her message arrives on time. When her second message is late, Narvin doesn’t panic. He pings the Master’s TARDIS, puts a second agent on monitoring duty, and tasks a third agent with planning potential reconnaissance. When she misses the next check in, he begins to lose the ability to focus on his other tasks at the Agency. He notifies Romana, and then shifts a handful of extra agents into search and tracking mode, and brings a few more in for reconnaissance preparation. When Leela misses her fourth check in, Narvin personally takes over recon prep and, after pulling in a few more agents to make a round dozen, he leads the first retrieval mission.

The first unsuccessful retrieval mission, of a multitude that take place over the next week.

He’s the first to find the two identical dead bodies on Konoi Seven, and positively identify them both as Finnian Valentine. He assigns five teams to search the planet, then the Blayling System, and then the proximate region of space-time. He spends sleepless nights personally scouring Matrix records, and he considers floating a proposal to re-start the long-dead precog program as another tracking method. He drafts a plan for creating a Coordinator in Extremis position at the CIA, so he can travel where and whenever necessary to nudge the War in the proper direction, and so he can search for the Agency’s lost humans.

In all of this busyness – this relentless need to _do something_ instead of just living with uncertainty – he doesn’t visit Leela’s quarters. He never does, when she’s on a mission. Not because he’s superstitious; he’s far too sensible for that. He simply detests the feel of her cold, dark rooms. His presence there seems foolhardy, as if he’s tempting some cosmic force that might otherwise be inclined to see her home safely.

But in the most logical and practical and not-superstitious sense, of course.

As the days without Leela turn into weeks, and the weeks turn to months, he occasionally finds himself standing in the extradimensional passageways, staring at her secret door, with no memory of how he got there. He’s hardly sleeping, but somehow still sleepwalking. Perhaps if he keeps his eyes closed and keys in the door code, he’ll step into warm and well-lit quarters with Leela sharpening one of her knives as she watches the Public Register Video, or rearranging the rugs in her bedroom, or brushing her hair as she readies for work.

He could sit beside her on the couch with his data pad, as he has hundreds of times, both of them periodically commenting on the news. He could help her move the bedroom rugs for cleaning, or step into the bathroom behind her and pluck the brush from her hand and spend a moment brushing hair before he draws it aside, over one shoulder, and kisses her warm neck.

One of these nights as he stands outside her flat, he watches his hand key in the code to open the door, as if his fingers belong to someone else entirely; a different Time Lord who not only opens the door, but steps into the dark flat. As quiet as a ghost, without leaving a footprint, he traces a path through each room. His disembodied fingertips brush across the front of the gilded credenza, and across the back of the velvet sofa. He studies her illegal knife collection, still immaculately preserved on the living room wall. He stands in front of the wardrobe, where one door has been left open, and stares at his robes hanging next to Leela’s leather clothes. He pauses in the bathroom doorway until his eyes adjust to the deep shadows, and he counts the glass jars and vials dotting the counter and filling her sonic shower.

The air recyclers have gone into standby mode without an occupant, and the flat feels stale. It almost smells like Leela, but not exactly.

Returning to the sofa, he sits down and absently rubs his palms across the velvet, as if he can force his mind back into his body by grounding himself through touch.

“I – ah,” he starts, but the sound of his voice feels profane in this empty place. He sits in silence for a while, until his detached consciousness settles back inside his skull. He tries again: “I love you, Leela.”

The darkness gives no answer.

Eventually he stretches out on the sofa, and stares at the ceiling until he falls asleep.

When his eyes open again, it’s to the sound of someone rummaging in the kitchen lockers. He isn’t alone in the flat, and for a blissfully groggy instant he _knows_ Leela is here. It must be her: he crossed her threshold, and found the courage to speak his love for her aloud, and this ritual summoned her back from the darkness beyond Gallifrey.

If only he’d done this sooner, he wouldn’t have had to live without her for so long.

By the time he sits up, his naturally pessimistic nature has kicked in, seizing his hope by the throat and squeezing. Quickly enough to avoid embarrassing himself, because he manages not to call out Leela's name, but not quickly enough to squelch his sense of sickly disappointment that it isn’t really her.

Romana stands in the kitchen cubby, on her tiptoes as she puts fresh food into the storage lockers. Efficiently going about her work, she doesn’t realize he’s here.

He clears his throat.

“Rassilon’s ghost!” Romana gasps, whirling around to face him. He sees the flicker of hope on her face, watches it collapse into the same disappointment he felt a moment ago. One hand clutching her chest, she lets out a shaky breath. “You frightened the daylights out of me, Narvin.”

Rising to his feet, he says, “Expecting company?”

“Not exactly.” She pats her right heart, and sighs. “Every now and then, it feels good to prepare for her return.”

“ _If_ she returns,” Narvin says, absently counting pieces of fruit to distract himself. He tries not to dwell on a conversation he had with Ace once, about Earth customs, and how some humans leave food on the graves of loved ones.

Romana sighs again, closing the last food locker. “If you really believe she isn’t returning, then you ought to move into these quarters. They are officially designated for the Deputy Coordinator. You can have them anytime you wish.”

“I … prefer my current quarters.”

Her mouth flattens into a wry smile. “I thought as much.” She plucks a piece of fruit from the counter and lobs it gently at him, underhanded, so it arcs across the room. He reaches out instinctively, bobbling it a little as he catches. “This food I’m replacing will have to be thrown out, if it isn’t eaten. Care to join me?”

He turns the yellow-fruit over in his hands. The overripe pulp is soft beneath its rough skin. Walking around the couch to the dining table, he says, “Magenta-fruit and ulanda are Leela’s favorites.”

Romana settles into a chair opposite him, a second yellow-fruit in her hand. “Then the more we eat, the more room in her kitchen for magenta-fruit and ulanda, instead.” 

It tastes horrible, too soft and sweet, but he finishes the first one and reaches for a second. Romana does the same, both of them silent. Narvin thinks that he ought to say something, but he can't decide what. Leela would know the right words, if she was here. 

The silence draws out into something more profound than simple quiet: a gesture of remembrance, a strange ritual between them as they honor Leela. They aren't moping - never that - but mourning, instead. The ache he feels isn't gone, but sitting here and sharing that ache with Romana lessens it a little. And after this ritual is over, they'll leave her quarters in darkness again, and step out together to face Gallifrey and the war without her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canonically this is where our characters are as of early 2k19. I'm marking this story finished, because it's as complete as it can be given Time War 1 cliffhangers. Big Finish recently announced the release of Time War 2 in a few months, so this fic might not be over. At least, I hope not - if BF doesn't bring Leela back into the main storyline in fairly short order, I will personally show up to Nick Briggs' and/or Scott Handcock's houses and stage a one-person riot. But as soon as BF gives me a glimmer of daylight between new canonical Gallifrey stories, space where I can cram in more Leela/Narvin moments, I'll probably be right back on my shippy bullshit.


	10. Gallifrey Canon: Cliff's Notes by chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I love this series a stupid amount, and I listen to it all the way through several times year. But sometimes I have a hard time keeping track of all the plotty ins and outs as they break down by episode. Since this fic is so tightly intertwined with canon, I'm including this chapter: a selective, high-level summary of the series to jog your memory, if you need it. For each story update, I'll add notes here.

**CHAPTER ONE NOTES **

A political thriller set on Gallifrey, with four primary characters:

  * Romana – Time Lady, former Doctor’s companion, President of Gallifrey. Leela’s bff. I’d personally take a bullet for her tbh.
  * Leela – human (but not from Earth), former Doctor’s companion, and a warrior from a tribe called the Sevateem. Superior fighter and strategist. Romana's bff. Was married to a Time Lord, Andred, until he died in the line of duty. Has no patience for Time Lord bullshit. Becomes blind halfway through the series, and is still blind at the beginning of this fic.
  * Narvin - Time Lord, Coordinator of the Celestial Intervention Agency, head Gallifreyan spook. Started out as a hard-nosed xenophobe calling for Romana’s impeachment, and ends up her most loyal supporter who follows her across all of time and reality. Still kind of a prig, regardless. Dislikes Braxiatel. During the most current episode release, he’s canonically a hot mess over Leela.
  * Braxiatel – Time Lord, the Doctor’s brother, a mentor to Romana since she was a student. A majorly manipulative asshole who doesn't hesitate to sacrifice anyone else for the greater good, whatever that happens to mean to him at any given point in time. At this point Brax's "greater good" means protecting Romana and Gallifrey, in that order. Definitely secretly in love with Romana. Despises Narvin. 



Current situation w/r/t canon:

 _Seasons 1-3 -_  Romana is impeached, and a dictator named Pandora takes over Gallifrey. This leads to civil war, and by the end Pandora is defeated, but an unstoppable engineered virus has decimated the Time Lord population. Only our main characters (plus a K-9) escape the planet and the virus, by hopping into the Axis, a secure multi-reality portal. The rescue is all Braxiatel's doing, and he intended to save Romana and Leela, but Narvin’s inclusion was accidental. This is a bit of a sore point for Narvin. Romana’s plan is to check out alternative Gallifreys, to search for the technology to cure to the virus, so they can go home and save Gallifrey Prime.

 _Gallifrey 4.1: Reborn_ and _Gallifrey 4.2: Disassembled -_  In the last few episodes before this fic begins, they visit a bad Gallifrey (lmaooooo you guys lbr tho, all Gallifreys are bad Gallifreys, I adore this trash planet), where Braxiatel sacrifices himself to save the others. Around this general time frame, unbeknownst to the others (but knownst to us), Narvin is captured by alt!Time Lords and they extract his future regenerations, a la the Pain Machine from The Princess Bride. So Narvin is only has one life left, his current regeneration. He hasn’t told anyone else that this happened.

Romana, Leela and Narvin (plus their K-9) are the only ones left on the Axis. Romana’s hella bummed out about Brax being dead. She feels she has a lot to atone for, and isn’t sure what steps to take next. She’s withdrawn at this point, staying isolated in her room while she gets her head and hearts sorted. Leela and Narvin canonically explore two other alt!Gallifreys without her, but we don’t hear specifics about those alt!Gallifreys in the audios. And this is where the fic begins.

[return to chapter one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/36592257)

~~~~~~

**CHAPTER TWO NOTES**

_Gallifrey 4.3: Annihilation -_  Romana decides that instead of looking for a virus cure as they explore the multiverse via the Axis, they’re just gonna search for a tolerable version of Gallifrey to call home. The next Gallifrey is ruled by vampires (I find this particular ~Old Who~ thing fucking hilarious. Rassilon literally defeated the vampires. RASSILON THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Anyhoodle). Romana is abducted by the vampire lord (MOTHER. FUCKING. GALLIFREYAN. VAMPIRE. LORD. PRAAAAAISE OMEGA.) and in order to save her, Leela agrees to take a potion created by the ~anti-vampire resistance~ (aka the Gallifreyan Scooby Gang) which de-ages Leela, enhances her senses, and returns her sight. Leela and Narvin track down Romana, and she decides to kill all the vampires on the planet, via plot device. Narvin is seriously wounded in this rescue process, badly enough that he is close to death. (The ongoing canonical Narvin whump in this series is DEEEEELIGHTFUL. It is. Like. My fave.) Romana encourages him to regenerate, and he finally admits to her and Leela that he can’t anymore, and why. They return to the Axis, to get him to the med bay before he shuffles off his mortal Time Lord coil. (ftr this ep is remarkably shippy and delightful, I am sarcastic because I love.) **[This chapter takes place just after this episode.]**

[return to chapter two](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/36712470)

 ~~~~~~

  **CHAPTER THREE NOTES**

_Gallifrey 4.4: Forever_ – This final alt!Gallifrey is similar to their own: Romana is President, with Narvin as her VP (“High Chancellor”). These Gallifreyans don’t have time travel, but they do keep a large slave population. Early on, Leela and Narvin are on an exploratory side quest, and a slave-driver mistakes Leela for a slave. Narvin quickly agrees that she is one, much to her distress, and on the dl he asks her to foment a slave rebellion to upset the current social situation and help the three of them escape back to the Axis. Leela reluctantly agrees. Because of plot reasons, the portal to the Axis disappears for good and they lose contact with K-9; they’re stranded, and this Gallifrey is their new home whether they like it or not. Leela’s hella pissed at Romana and Narvin, and her slave uprising is so successful that she leads a mass exodus from the Citadel. Romana and Narvin stay behind to step into their dead doppelgangers’ lives.

 _Gallifrey 5.1: Emancipation_ – Leela’s township, Mancipia, is in an escalating feud with Councilor Allora’s mining guild over mineral rights. Blah blah politics, Leela’s still hella pissed with Romana and Narvin, but has gotten on by being a badass leader and defending the ex-slaves from their former masters. Romana summons Leela and Allora to the Capitol for negotiations, to resolve their feud. Leela comes, bringing along her advisor Valyes. Allora  & Valyes are secretly in league and they launch a coup plot, exploding a bomb next to Leela, framing Narvin, and trying to murder Romana (with tacky jewelry!). Narvin and Romana are one step ahead of Allora, and Narvin pretends to be duped by the plot, going to a jail cell so he can get Allora to confess her guilt on tape. Leela and Romana have begun to mend their friendship, but Leela still returns to Mancipia at the end of the ep. **[The first section of this chapter takes place at the end of this episode.]**

 _Gallifrey 5.2: Evolution_ – Basically this alt!Gallifrey is an awful place that really abused its slaves. In the process of trying (and failing) to get some form of time travel up and running, Romana stumbles across a cure for the Dogma Virus that wrecked Gallifrey Prime. Also, the Axis portal starts making noise, because it’s about to bust back into alt!Gallifrey like the Kool-Aid Man. Romana and Narvin don’t really see Leela this ep, but we do find out that Narvin (without Romana’s knowledge) has recruited informants in Leela’s inner circle, specifically to make sure she’s healthy and safe. There’s a moment at the end of the ep when Narvin thinks Leela might have left alt!Gallifrey for good, and he’s def upset about it. **[The second section of this chapter takes place some considerable time after this episode.]**

[return to chapter three](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/37423958)

~~~~~~

** CHAPTER FOUR NOTES **

_Gallifrey 5.3: Arbitration_ – A lot of time has passed since the last ep – at least 1+ year. There’s a lot of great plot about bringing former slaveowners to justice, the details of which aren’t super relevant to this shippy fic, except that at one point Romana sends Narvin to negotiate with Leela. She’s obviously initially delighted to see him, and he begs her to come back to the Citadel with him. (Then he starts doing stupid shit, and she’s less pleased, but ’twas ever thus, it’s part of why I love them sfm.) Eventually one particular douchecanoe slaveowner gets his comeuppance during a scene in the Panopticon, while Leela is there with Romana and Narvin. At this moment, the Axis portal reappears, and Daleks immediately flounce out, shouting SURPRISE BITCH, I BET YOU THOUGHT YOU’D SEEN THE LAST OF ME. (Daleks are into old memes. Feel free to judge them, they deserve it.)

 _Gallifrey 6.1: Extermination_ – Romana, Leela and Narvin defeat a squad of Daleks, preventing them from conquering alt!Gallifrey. During this episode-long battle, Romana and Leela realize how much they’ve missed each other, and their friendship mends. Romana is alone for 10 minutes with a wounded Dalek and goes Hella Dark (y’all there are few things that get me more riled up than when the Daleks call Romana “Unit 117”! I want to reach through my earbuds and choke out every single one of them, goddamn!). While they’re separated from Romana, Leela and Narvin have an Intense Bonding Moment, where he proves his loyalty and bravery by choosing to go with her into certain danger and death to face the Daleks (goDDD this is such a perfect scene I want to quote the whole thing but I won’t, but IT’S SO MAGNIFICENT Y’ALL UGH – he threatens to carry Leela to safety, and she’s like “I’D LIKE TO SEE YOU FUCKING TRY, NARVIN” and he basically has a breakdown and comes around, and her DELIGHT when she realizes he didn’t leave, and his voice cracks when he admits he’d rather die beside her, defending Romana, than live without both of these kickass women and jksldjksldfjklds). All three of them leave alt!Gallifrey safe and sound and Dalek-free, and they head for Gallifrey Prime via the Axis.

 _Gallifrey 6.2: Renaissance_ – When our trio step into Gallifrey Prime, they find a deserted, ruined Citadel and are greeted by a Time Lady named Tre – aka Romana III – who has come back in time to rebuild everything. Listen, three quarters of this ep is Time Lord technobabble and this pedantic stuff GENUINELY, DEEPLY DELIGHTS me, but it all boils down to the fact that Romana and Tre team up to build a Minecraft Citadel for Plot Reasons. In the meantime, Tre, Romana, Leela, and Narvin are the only living beings in the deserted city. The two Romanas are bonkers busy and distracted (and sleep deprived), working together on their Plotty Minecraft project. Leela and Narvin have lots of time to kick it by themselves. **[This is where the first two sections of this chapter are set.]**  Romana and Tre don’t like each other, and eventually Tre manages to impeach Romana and take over the presidency. Narvin is roped into running the trial and banishing Romana offworld. (This entire concept is FUCKING HILARIOUS btw, the mechanics of this Time Lord trial. At this point in the ep, there’s a tiny handful of Gallifreyans on the planet [we don't get a definite number but it's maybe just twelve or so, max??? Wtf???], 2 of whom are the SAME FUCKING PERSON, Narvin standing there during a trial montage, wearing silly robes and cross-examining two Romanas and submitting evidence to himself as judge??? Lmao everything is goddamn ABSURD and I LOVE IT SFM, the Time Lords are forever ridiculous) **[This is where the third section of this chapter is set.]** Leela decides to accompany Romana offworld in her banishment, but before Romana can leave, Minecraft Gallifrey starts to disintegrate. Romana physically sacrifices herself to preserve the Citadel. In the last scene she begins to regenerate into Tre.

[return to chapter four](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/37808066)

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**CHAPTER FIVE NOTES**

_Gallifrey 6.3: Ascension_ – Y’all this ep is super convoluted, imma just do some bullets to get us all through this, narratively and emotionally speaking:

  1. Turns out that Romana, Leela and Narvin weren’t actually in the real Gallifrey during the last ep. They were in the Matrix, in a fake Gallifrey, and Tre was a computer projection of Romana’s next incarnation.
  2. Romana doesn’t actually regenerate, she gets shoved out of the Matrix and into the real Gallifrey, where she’s promptly elected president again, because the Time Lords are only idiots 99% of the time. We should give them credit, when they have those 1% moments.
  3. Leela and Narvin are still stuck inside the Matrix. As they try to escape, Leela gets pinned by collapsing pixels, he saves her life and it’s hella adorable; Narvin can’t run fast enough to keep up, and she refuses to leave him, it’s ALSO hella adorable – afterward they gush to each other’s faces about how much they appreciate and trust each other. All is well between them again, STAB ME IN THE KIDNEYS PLS.
  4. They cure the Dogma Virus. Shh, don’t worry about the details. ヽ( ͡͡ ° ͜ ʖ ͡ °)⊃━☆ﾟ. * magic ･ ｡ﾟ
  5. The Daleks secretly followed the three of them through the Axis portal, and it turns out that Minecraft Gallifrey was designed (by Romana in the future) as a Dalek trap. For a hot second, it looks like Romana has permanently sealed herself inside the Matrix with the Daleks to save the real Gallifrey.
  6. Narvin panics and, against Leela’s advice, makes a desperate attempt to save Romana by sending a random Time Lord to ask the Doctor to prevent the Daleks from ever being created … and this is the inciting incident in the Time War.  
W h a t  
T h e  
A c t u a l  
F   U   C   K,  
N a r v i n.  
Listen to your girlfriend ffs.  
(lol jk this is my fave thing ever, narratively speaking, it’s PERFECT. NARVIN ILU FOR THE HOT MESS U ARE BABE don’t ever change.)


  1. Romana’s in the real Gallifrey, Narvin realizes he screwed the paradox-pooch and is appropriately mortified. (NO LIE, THIS WAS ORIGINALLY SUPPOSED TO BE THE FINAL EPISODE OF GALLIFREY FOREVER, Y’ALL. CAN. YOU. EVEN. IMAGINE.)



_Gallifrey 7: Intervention Earth_ – I’m gonna be real with y'all, this is my least fave season of Gallifrey. It’s an alternative timeline situation. Romana II and Leela are awol, and Tre is President. None of this fic is set during this season, and I’m really digging this bullet point format, so we’ll just roll through the essential canon you need before we move on:

  1. Romana/Tre & Leela had a major falling out and haven’t seen each other in years. Leela isn't living on Gallifrey anymore. (Next season, we get a general idea of why, but never a specific description of the incident.)
  2. Ace McShane (human, 7th Doctor’s companion, prone to attacking Daleks with a baseball bat because she’s a badass) has trained as a CIA agent and is running ops for the Time Lords. Narvin is still on Gallifrey and is her c/o. 10/10 quality addition to the cast.
  3. Canonically, Narvin is absolute shit at fieldwork. Like, stomping around on foreign planets wearing his CIA uniform and announcing himself as an alien to literally everyone he meets. It’s utterly hilarious. His patented three-step process for navigating a new culture: (a) find the nearest native who reminds him of Leela; (b) fling himself without subtlety or strategy into every problematic situation he comes across; and (c) rely on alt!Leela to keep him alive.
  4. Braxiatel shows up at the end, out of nowhere – the “Gallifrey” version of deus ex machina is Brax ex machina. He’s up to his usual hijinks, mysterious and manipulative. Also he’s still fixated on his most fundamental, reliable hijink: breaking the laws of time and space to save Romana, when she needs him.



_Gallifrey 8: Enemy Lines -_ **[The first section of this chapter takes place shortly before this season, during the incident that caused Leela and Romana to have a serious falling out.]** We’re still technically in the s7 alt reality, but back in time to the moment of Romana II’s regeneration into Tre. The inciting incident happens on a foreign ship called the Moros, where Romana personally steps in to prevent intergalactic war. Last season, this caused her to regenerate into Tre and things played out from there. In this season, Romana doesn’t regenerate and we see how she would’ve handled things. We find out that Leela and Romana’s falling out happened when Leela threatened violence toward a diplomatic representative from the Monan Host, with no more details provided than that. In this version with Romana instead of Tre, they make up and Leela stays on Gallifrey. Tons of warmongering political shenanigans happen between the time-faring races (also: water is wet), but our main characters keep dying – first Narvin, then Ace (both of them actually die twice this season! It’s super stressful! Goddammit, David Llewellyn!). Romana, Leela and Braxiatel are all next on the list. They figure out that the murderer is an ancient time lord spirit, coming along and cleaning up their paradoxical timelines. The spirit is hella Extra about this whole reaping process, because all Time Lords are Like That, but especially the crotchety old ones. Ultimately Leela and Romana make a huge sacrifice, together, to clean up the timelines to the spirit’s satisfaction, and they’re returned to Gallifrey on the one true timeline, back at the opening scene of this season on the Moros. This time around, everything plays out in the most benign possible way. Narvin and Ace aren’t dead anymore, Brax is back for good, and the alt timeline is only a vague dreamlike memory for Romana and Leela (but no one else). The only person who has a full memory of what happened is Brax, because Brax ex machina. The threat of war is averted, for now. Romana resigns the presidency, appoints herself as Coordinator of the CIA, and demotes Narvin to Deputy Coordinator.  **[The second section of this chapter takes place just after the end of the season, when time has been reset.]**

[return to chapter five](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/38149820)

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**CHAPTER SIX NOTES**

_Short Trip: Erasure_ – Officially, Big Finish hasn’t made clear where this ep fits into canon. For me, it fits here. And hoooo boy, y’all hold onto your silly Time Lord collars because here we go!  **[The first section of this chapter takes place immediately after the last chapter, and also right before this episode.]** For an unspecified reason, Romana sends Leela and Narvin to her ancestral House, Heartshaven. (This is the same abandoned, semi-sentient House that Romana accidentally burned down – at least partially – in s3.) An earthquake hits Heartshaven, bringing down some of the architecture, and Leela is badly injured. Narvin carries her into the cellar for safety. Even though she’s unresponsive and seems unconscious, he keeps talking to her until help arrives. He tells her the story of his first time meeting the Doctor. He also goes on, in some detail, about how much he loves her smile, and how he’d like to think he’s her favorite Time Lord (even though he admits that he probably barely cracks her top three, omfg baaaabe of course you do). By the end of the episode his voice is breaking as he confesses how important she is to him, and how she’s changed him and knowing her has made him a better man. Romana shows up to rescue the two of them as he’s practically weeping over an unresponsive Leela, confessing some of his CIA misdeeds. They agree never to tell her about the horrible genocidal things they did together before they knew her, because they’re afraid she’ll never trust them again if she knows. Leela survives this episode; I did not.  **[The second section of this chapter takes place just after this episode.]**

[return to chapter six](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/38558411)

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**CHAPTER SEVEN & EIGHT NOTES**

These chapters aren't associated with any particular canon episode of Gallifrey, but they occur sometime between  _Erasure_ and  _Time War Volume 1: Celestial Intervention_.

[return to chapter seven](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/39145009)

[return to chapter eight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/39382093)

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**CHAPTER NINE NOTES**

_Gallifrey Time War 1.1: Celestial Intervention –_ As war with the Daleks becomes inevitable, the CIA finds itself at odds with Gallifrey's War Council, with President Livia Caralis in between. There’s a bunch of fun spy stuff and backstabbing in the Capitol during this ep, but basically the War Council is involved in some shady shit, the worst revelation being that they’re resurrecting dead time lords (“Project Revenant”) so they have enough soldiers to serve as cannon fodder in the war. It turns out President Livia was in on the scheme the whole time, and the CIA is losing political and budgetary clout like a popped balloon. There are some adorably shippy scenes in this ep, [like this one](http://gallifreyburning.tumblr.com/post/177656142734/i-need-to-post-about-this-little-leelanarvin). Cling to what happiness you find, though, because everything's about to go to hell in a handbasket.  **[The first section of this chapter takes place throughout this episode.]**

 _Gallifrey Time War 1.2: Soldier Obscura –_ Braxiatel and Ace go on a mission together. Brax is a dick (also: water is wet), and neither he nor Ace return to Gallifrey when the mission goes wrong. Brax reports back to Romana that Ace is dead, and then buggers off without saying goodbye. **[The second section of this chapter takes place after this episode.]**

 _Gallifrey Time War 1.3: The Devil You Know –_ In spite of Narvin’s misgivings, Romana sends Leela out on a mission, alone, with the Master. The Master gets up to his usual evil manipulative hijinks, and at the end of the episode he dumps Leela into the Time Vortex, so she's lost in time and space. **[The third section of this chapter takes place after this episode.]**

 _Gallifrey Time War 1.4: Extreme Measures_ \- Rassilon's back, bitches! Buckle up, the Time War party is in full swing!

[return to chapter nine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737805/chapters/40916273)

**Author's Note:**

> Eternal thanks to my beta reader extraordinaire, [redtailedhawk90](http://redtailedhawk90.tumblr.com). She doesn't even go to this school or know any of these kids, but she gamely read my self-indulgent story and provided so much helpful feedback.


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